BV  230  .G5  1886 

Gladden,  Washington,  1836 

1918. 
The  Lord's  prayer 


THE  LORD'S  PRAYER  _____ 


OCT  ^^n   1936 


SEVEN  HOMILIES     ^^ 


Sr  .u--.^ 


By  WASHINGTON   GLADDEN 


BOSTON  AND   NEW  YORK 
HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN  AND   COMPANY 

iSS6 


Copyright,  1880, 
By  TTASHINGTON  GLADDE5 


All  rights  reserved. 


The  Riverside  Press,  Cambridge. 
Stereotyped  and  Printed  by  H.  0.  Houghton  &  C« 


CONTENTS. 


PAGB 

Preface        ^ 

I.  The  Eternal  Father 9 

II.  The  Sacred  Name 34 

III.  The  Eternal  Kingdom         ....  59 

IV.  The  Blessed  Will 82 

V.  The  Convenient  Food 106 

VI.  The  Forgiving  Grace 129 

Vn.  The  Great  Salvation         ....  167 


PEEFAOE. 


Tele  provocation  of  these  homilies  was  a 
series  of  short  but  incisive  letters,  written 
by  Mr.  John  Ruskin  to  an  English  clergy- 
man, but  published  by  the  writer's  consent 
in  the  "  Contemporary  Review,"  and  meant 
for  all  the  English  clergy.  I  quote  some  of 
his  questions. 

"  Can  this  Gospel  of  Christ  be  put  into 
such  plain  words  and  short  terms  that  a 
plain  man  can  understand  it  ?  and  if  so, 
would  it  not  be,  in  a  quite  primal  sense,  de- 
sirable that  it  should  be  so  ?  " 

And  again :  — 

"  I  want  only  to  put  this  sterner  question 
to  your  council,  how  this  Gospel  is  to  be 
preached  '  everywhere  '  or  '  to  all  nations,' 
if  first  its  preachers  have  not  determined 
quite  clearly  what  it  is.     And  might  not 


6  PREFACE. 

such  definition,  acceptable  to  the  entire  body 
of  the  Church  of  Christ,  be  arrived  at  by 
merely  explaining  in  their  completeness  and 
life  the  terms  of  the  Lord's  Prayer  —  the 
first  words  taught  to  children  all  over  the 
Christian  world  ?  " 

And  again :  — 

"  My  meaning  in  saying  that  the  Lord's 
Prayer  might  be  made  a  foundation  of  Gos- 
pel-teaching was  not  that  it  contained  all 
that  Christian  ministers  have  to  teach  ;  but 
that  it  contains  what  all  Christians  are 
agreed  upon  as  first  to  be  taught ;  and  that 
no  good  parish-working  pastor  in  any  part 
of  the  world  but  would  be  glad  to  take  his 
part  in  making  it  clear  and  living  to  his 
congregation." 

Though  I  am  not  a  member  of  the  com- 
munion for  which  these  letters  of  Mr.  Ruskin 
were  intended,  I  could  not  help  feeling  the 
force  of  his  suggestions,  and  this  small  vol- 
ume is  one  fruit  of  them.  Whatever  value 
the  reader  may  discover  in  these  studies,  the 
writer  has  gained  by  means  of  them  not 


PREFACE.  7 

only  a  better  understanding  of  the  Lord's 
Prayer,  but  an  altogether  new  sense  of  the 
wideness  of   its  range  and  the  fullness  of 
its  meaning. 
NoBTH  Chukch  Study,  Springfield,  Mass. 


THE  LOED'S  PEATEK. 


THE  ETERNAL  FATHER. 
Our  Father  who  art  in  heaven.  — Matt.  vi.  9. 

It  is  an  old  path  to  whose  entrance  we 
turn  our  faces  when  we  begin  to  study  the 
Lord's  Prayer, —  an  old  path  and  well-worn 
by  the  feet  of  many  incurious  worshipers 
and  many  devout  interpreters.  What  then  ? 
Are  there  no  ways  worth  walking  in  but 
those  uncertain  trails  blazed  for  us  by  pio- 
neers through  tangled  forests  on  the  fron- 
tiers of  faith  ?  Old  roads  there  are  that 
offer  fair  prospects  and  that  lead  to  pleas- 
ant places ;  where  the  hedgerows  every 
year  are  sweet  with  blossoms  and  musical 
with  birds ;  from  beneath  whose  sheltering 
rocks  the  living  water  springs  as  cool  and 


10  TEE  LORD'S  PRATER. 

fresh   to-day   as   when    our   fathers   drank 
thereof. 

The  prayer  that  Christ  taught  his  dis- 
ciples is  not  a  threadbare  formula;  it  is 
as  full  as  it  ever  was  of  fresh  and  vital 
truth.  And  while  we  dwell  upon  its  famil- 
iar phrases,  let  us  trust  that  his  own  Spirit, 
which  takes  of  the  things  that  he  has  left 
and  makes  them  plain  to  us,  will  abide 
with  us,  helping  us  now  to  understand,  and 
evermore  devoutly  and  trustfully  to  use,  the 
petitions  that  are  grouped  in  this  simple 
form  of  words. 

The  first  thing  to  be  noted  is  the  brevity 
of  this  prayer.  This  is  especially  significant 
when  taken  in  connection  with  the  words 
which  the  Saviour  had  just  been  speaking. 
"  When  ye  pray  use  not  vain  repetitions  as 
the  heathen  do,  for  they  think  that  they 
shall  be  heard  for  their  much  speaking. 
Be  ye  not  therefore  like  unto  them."  In 
most  of  the  other  religions  the  eflBcacy  of 
prayer  has  been  supposed  to  depend  on  its 


THE  ETERNAL  FATHER.  11 

length.  The  notion  is  that  the  gods  will 
do  nothing  for  men  unless  they  are  teased. 
And  even  the  Jews  themselves  had  fallen 
into  this  error,  for  our  Lord  denounces  the 
Pharisees  who  devour  widows'  houses,  and 
for  a  pretense  (or  for  a  mask  of  their  wick- 
edness) make  long  prayers.  We  know 
that  long  prayers  are  quite  the  fashion  now 
among  devout  Jews  ;  one  of  the  maxims  of 
the  Rabbis  is,  "  Prolix  prayer  protracts  life." 
At  the  sacrament  of  circumcision  the  pre- 
scribed prayers  of  orthodox  Jews  are  re- 
peated with  great  rapidity,  for  the  reason 
that  if  they  were  deliberately  read  a  whole 
day  would  be  consumed  in  reading  them. 

It  was  not  the  Gentiles  alone,  then,  but 
his  own  people  as  well,  that  Jesus  was  re- 
buking by  his  warning  against  vain  repe- 
titions and  long  prayers.  This  prayer  that 
he  has  left  us  is  so  short  that  one  who  ut- 
ters it  very  slowly  will  finish  it  within  one 
minute.  And  while  many  times  we  cannot 
tell  our.  Father  in  heaven  within  the  space 
of  one  minute  all  the  things  that  we  want 


12  THE  LORD'S  PRATER. 

to  tell  him, — while  we  cannot  always  re- 
lieve our  own  burdened  spirits  without  a 
longer  season  of  communion  with  him  than 
that,  —  yet  it  is  true  beyond  a  doubt  that 
we  often  err  as  the  Jews  and  the  Gentiles 
did  in  supposing  that  we  are  heard  for  our 
much  speaking.  No  doubt  many  of  our 
public  prayers,  especially  in  pulpit  and 
prayer-meeting,  would  be  far  more  effect- 
ual if  they  followed  more  nearly  the  pat- 
tern set  for  us  in  the  brevity  of  the  Lord's 
Prayer. 

Two  or  three  more  questions  ought  to 
be  answered  before  we  proceed  witli  our 
study. 

How  was  this  prayer  to  be  used  ?  Was 
it  to  be  used  exclusively  ?  So  some  per- 
sons have  supposed.  In  Luke's  version  of 
the  prayer  he  reports  the  Master  as  prefac- 
ing it  with  the  words,  "  When  ye  pray, 
say,  Our  Father  who  art  in  heaven," 
etc.  Therefore  it  has  been  inferred  that 
he   meaut  to  give  them  a  form    of    words 


THE  ETERNAL  FATHER.  13 

which  they  were  always  to  use,  and  that 
they  were  never  to  use  any  other  words  of 
prayer.  But  it  is  plain  that  this  cannot  be 
his  meaning,  because  we  have  a  record  in 
the  Acts  of  the  Apostles  of  several  prayers 
which  did  not  follow  this  form  of  words, 
and  which  were  answered  abundantly.  To 
confine  his  disciples  to  a  single  form  of 
prayer  would  have  been  exactly  contrary 
to  the  whole  spirit  of  his  teaching. 

But  if  we  are  at  liberty  to  use  other 
words  when  we  pray,  ought  we  always 
when  we  pray  to  use  these  words  —  to  in- 
clude this  prayer  in  all  our  supplications  ? 
No ;  I  do  not  think  that  our  Lord  means  to 
require  that.  We  shall  often  wish  to  pray 
in  these  words  ;  but  he  means  that  our  de- 
sires shall  be  free  to  utter  themselves  in 
their  own  way.  In  Matthew's  report  of 
the  prayer,  our  Lord  begins  by  saying : 
'•'' After  this  manner^  therefore,  pray  ye." 
The  prayer  is  a  model,  in  its  simplicity,  its 
brevity,  its  directness  ;  but  it  is  not  a  pre- 
scribed form  ;  it  is  a  staff  and  not  a  fetter 
for  the  praying  soul. 


14  THE  LORD'S  PRAYER. 

Was  it  the  design  of  the  Master  that  this 
prayer,  or  indeed  that  any  prayer,  should 
be  used  publicly?     Some   things  that  are 
said   in  this  Sermon  on  the  Mount  would 
seem  to  answer  this  question  in  the  nega- 
tiv^.     "  When  thou  prayest  thou  shalt  not 
be  as  the  hypocrites  are ;  for  they  love  to 
pray  standing  in  the  synagogues  and  in  the 
corners  of  the    streets,  that  they  may  be 
seen  of  men.     Verily  I  say  unto  you,  they 
have  their  -reward.     But  thou,  when  thou 
prayest,   enter  into  thy  closet,    and   when 
thou  hast  shut  thy  door,  pray  to  thy  Father 
which  is  in  secret ;  and  thy  Father  which 
seeth  in  secret  shall  reward  thee  openly." 
Does  this  forbid  all  public  prayer?     Cer- 
tainly it  does  if  we  are  always  to  take  the 
Bible  just  as  it  reads  —  to  interpret  all  its 
sayings  literally.     No   command  could  be 
more  express  than  this  of  our  Lord,  not  to 
pray  in  the  synagogues,  but  when  we  pray 
to  enter  into  the  closet  and  shut  the  door. 
Yet  we  know  that  our  Lord  himself  some- 
times prayed  in  the  presence  of  others.    He 


THE  ETERNAL  FATHER.  15 

prayed  at  the  tomb  of  Lazarus ;  he  prayed 
in  the  upper  room  with  his  disciples  on  the 
night  of  the  Last  Supper —  that  prayer  of 
triumphant  faith  and  deathless  love  which 
John  has  recorded  in  tHe  seventeenth  chap- 
ter of  his  Gospel.  We  know,  too,  that  the 
prayers  of  his  disciples,  when  they  were 
all  with  one  accord  in  one  place,  and  there 
lifted  up  their  supplications,  were  richly 
answered.  So,  then,  we  infer  that  this 
preface  of  the  Lord's  Prayer  is  not  to  be 
taken  literally;  that  it  is  only  a  strong  re- 
buke of  ostentatious  praying,  —  of  the  hy- 
pocrisy which  prays  to  be  heard  and  seen 
of  men.  Indeed,  all  true  prayer  in  public 
is  a  kind  of  secret  prayer ;  for,  though  the 
one  who  prays  stands  or  kneels  among  his 
fellow-men,  he  is  as  much  alone  with  God 
as  if  he  were  in  his  closet.  He  may  think 
of  those  who  listen  ;  he  may  seek  to  put 
himself  in  their  places  and  to  be  the  voice 
of  their  desires  and  their  confessions;  but 
the  moment  he  begins  to  think  of  what 
they  are  thinking  about   his  prayer,  that 


16  THE  LORD'S  PRAYER. 

moment  he  ceases  to  pray.     Prayer  in  the 

assembly,  as  well  as  in  the  solitude,  is  "  the 
flight  of  one  alone  to  the  only  One." 

Let  us  turn  now  to  the  first  sentence  of 
the  Lord's  Prayer,  which  shall  be  our  theme 
for  a  little  while  this  morning. 

Our  Father  who  art  in  heaven.  Did  the 
people  to  whom  this  Sermon  on  the  Mount 
was  spoken  know  before  this  that  God  was 
their  Father  ?  It  is  confessed  that  they  had 
clearer  ideas  about  God  than  any  other  peo- 
ple in  the  world;  was  this  thought  that  he 
is  our  Father  among  their  common  thoughts 
of  him  ? 

No,  it  was  not.  I  believe  that  the  word 
Father  is  applied  to  God  seven  times  in  the 
Old  Testament ;  among  the  innumerable 
references  to  the  Supreme  Being  which 
crowd  almost  every  chapter  of  all  the  books 
of  the  Old  Testament  but  one,  he  is  men- 
tioned just  seven  times  as  a  Father,  —  five 
times  as  the  Father  of  the  Hebrew  people, 
twice  as  sustaining  that  relation  to  indi- 


THE  ETERNAL  FATHER.  17 

viduals.  Of  these  two  intimations  that  God 
is  the  Father  of  individual  men,  one  is  a 
promise  to  David  that  God  will  be  a  father 
to  his  son,  Solomon ;  the  other  is  a  predic- 
tion that  by  and  by  men  will  pray  to  God 
calling  him  Father,  —  a  prediction  fulfilled 
in  this  prayer.  For  there  is  no  record  of 
any  prayer  in  the  Old  Testament  in  which 
God  is  addressed  as  Father.  We  have  the 
words  of  several  prayers  in  which  the  holy 
men  of  God  called  upon  him  by  the  names 
that  they  best  knew  him  by,  but  there  is 
not  one  in  which  they  address  him  as  their 
Father.  "  In  the  vocative  case,  as  an  ad- 
dress to  God  in  prayer,"  says  Dean  Mansel, 
the  name  of  Father  "  does  not  occur  in  the 
Old  Testament." 

It  was,  then,  practically  a  new  thought 
about  God  which  our  Saviour  gave  his  dis- 
ciples when  he  taught  them  about  God. 
They  had  always  known  him  as  the  Eter- 
nal, the  Creator,  the  Self-existent  One,  the 
Supreme  Ruler,  the  Judge,  the  Lord  of 
Hosts   or  of   Battles,  the   Captain  of  the 


18  THE  LORD'S  PRATER. 

armies  of  heaven  ;  but  this  thought  of  him 
as  the  Father  in  heaven  was  one  that  was 
very  far  from  all  their  common  thoughts  of 
him.  When  a  prayer  was  given  them  in 
which  this  name,  and  this  name  only,  was 
applied  to  him,  —  when  they  were  taught 
to  think  of  him  as  their  Father,  and  to 
come  to  him  with  the  freedom  and  the  con- 
fidence that  a  little  child  feels  in  coming  to 
its  father,  it  is  certain  that  a  wonderful 
change  must  have  taken  place  in  all  their 
religious  ideas  and  feelings.  This  word  took 
them  into  a  new  world.  I  do  not  think  that 
any  of  us  can  begin  to  imagine  the  revolu- 
tion that  was  made  in  the  religious  life  of 
the  disciples  of  Christ  when  they  began  to 
say,  "  Our  Father  in  Heaven,"  and  began, 
though  dimly,  to  understand  that  in  all  its 
tender  and  winning  suggestions  the  word 
was  not  only  true,  but  that  it  was  far  within 
the  truth.  It  was  to  them  as  if  they  had 
been  standing  for  a  long  time  before  the 
grim  outer  walls  of  some  old  castle  which 
they  had  been  summoned  to  enter,  —  stand- 


THE  ETERNAL  FATHER.  19 

ing  there  and  looking  doubtfully  at  the  for- 
bidding granite  battlements,  witli  cannon 
and  sentries  on  the  ramparts,  with  sugges- 
tions of  gloomy  passages  and  dungeons  and 
chains  within,  —  when  all  at  once  a  little 
door  opened,  and  they  saw  within  the  wall 
a  pleasant  garden,  with  flowers  and  fount- 
ains and  cool  retreats,  and  caught  a  breath 
of  the  sweetest  odors,  and  heard  a  burst  of 
melody  from  singing  birds  and  happy  chil- 
dren playing  in  the  sun.  Such  an  opening 
into  the  very  heart  of  God  did  this  word 
Father  make  for  all  who  had  stood  for  long 
in  the  cold  shadow  of  the  old  monarchical 
conception  of  his  character.  There  was 
meaning:  in  the  word  of  the  Master  when 
he  said,  "  I  am  the  Door." 

One  thing,  however,  these  disciples  did 
not  need  to  learn  about  God,  and  that  was 
his  personality.  If  they  had  not  known  that 
God  was  a  Person,  this  word  would  have 
taught  it  to  them ;  but  they  did  know  it. 
Whatever  else  their  special  training  had 
failed  to  do  for  the  Jews,  it  had  not  failed 


20  THE  LORD'S  PRATER. 

to  convey  to  them  the  truth  that  God  is  a 
conscious  Person ;  that  he  has  intelligence 
in  some  respects  like  ours,  yet  infinitely 
transcending  ours ;  that  he  has  affection, 
and  free  will,  so  that  he  can  love  his  chil- 
dren and  choose  their  welfare.  Mr.  Mat- 
thew Arnold  tries  to  make  out  that  the  ear- 
lier Hebrews  did  not  believe  in  a  personal 
Deity  (which  is  a  monstrous  inversion  of 
the  facts  of  the  Biblical  history),  but  even 
he  asserts  that  in  the  later  days  of  the  na- 
tion this  belief  was  universal  among  them. 

The  word  Father  did  not  help  them  in 
forming  the  idea  of  the  Divine  Personality  ; 
they  had  believed  God  to  be  a  Person ;  only 
it  was,  as  we  have  said,  a  different  kind  of 
person  that  they  had  thought  of  when  they 
had  thought  of  him,  —  it  was  a  King,  or  a 
Judge,  or  a  Warrior,  and  not  a  loving 
Father. 

To  us,  however,  this  word  may  be  pre- 
cious, not  so  much  in  giving  us  the  idea  of 
the  personality  of  God,  as  in  helping  us  to 
hold  on  to  it.     For  although  this  doctrine 


THE  ETERNAL  FATHER.  21 

may  be  abused,  and  often  is  ;  though  men 
who  speak  of  God  as  a  Person  often  mean 
by  that  that  he  is  altogether  such  an  one 
as  themselves,  thus  degrading  his  charac- 
ter and  limiting  his  power ;  nevertheless  it 
is  essential  to  all  true  worship  and  to  all 
fruitful  religious  thought  that  we  keep  hold 
of  this  idea,  —  that  he  is  something  more 
than  a  law  or  a  system  of  laws,  something 
better  than  a  force  or  a  universe  of  forces, 
something  diviner  than  the  order  of  nature 
or  "the  stream  of  tendency  by  which  all 
things  fulfill  the  laws  of  their  being,"  — 
that  he  is  a  conscious  Person,  a  living,  lov- 
ing Father. 

Just  at  this  time  there  is  special  need 
of  reaffirming  this  truth.  For  the  study  of 
physical  science,  which  is  simply  a  study 
of  the  laws  of  physical  nature,  has  come  to 
occupy  so  large  a  place  in  the  interest  of 
men  that  many  of  them  have  been  inclined 
to  insist  upon  the  hasty  and  foolish  conclu- 
sion that  there  is  no  God  but  nature  and 
its  forces ;  that  the  All  is  God,  and  that 


22  THE  LORD'S  PRATER. 

there  is  no  other.  This  is  Pantheism  — 
and  there  are  many  forms  of  it.  Some 
Pantheists  seem  to  think  that  God  is  sim- 
ply the  sura  of  all  things  that  are ;  others 
teach,  with  Spinoza,  that  God  is  the  univer- 
sal substance  —  the  substance  out  of  which 
all  the  worlds  and  all  their  works  were 
made;  (who  made  them  I  wonder?)  others 
that  the  forces  which  act  and  react  in  nat- 
ure, —  gravitation,  cohesion,  chemical  affin- 
ity, heat,  light,  electricity  and  the  rest,  — 
that  these  are  Gpd  ;  others  say,  with  Fichte, 
that  God  is  the  universal  moral  order.  But 
all  these  theories  agree  in  this,  that  they 
identify  God  with  the  universe  ;  they  strip 
him  of  all  individuality  ;  they  make  of  him 
only  an  immense  aggregation  of  things  or  a 
group  of  forces  or  a  principle  of  morality  or 
something  else  abstract  or  impersonal. 

I  will  not  stop  to  show  how  unphilosoph- 
ical  this  notion  is,  though  that  is  not  a  hard 
thing  to  do ;  I  only  wish  to  point  out  that 
this  word,  by  which  our  Lord  teaches  us  to 
pray  to   his    and    our  Father,  is  the  very 


THE  ETERNAL  FATHER.  23 

antithesis  of  Pantheism.  It  aflBrms  exactly 
what  Pantheism  denies.  If  God  is  our 
Father  he  is  surely  a  conscious  Person.  No 
Pantheist  can  use  the  words  of  the  Lord's 
Prayer  in  their  obvious  and  natural  mean- 
ing. None  of  them  except  Renan,  I  think, 
has  ever  attempted  it.  He  seems  to  belong 
to  a  class  of  Pantheists  whose  views  are 
concisely  expressed  by  Eckhart,  one  of  the 
old  mystics  :  "  God  is  nothing  and  God  is 
something ;  that  which  is  something  is  also 
nothing  ;  what  God  is  he  is  altogether."  I 
should  like  to  see  anybody  go  to  work  to 
disprove  that  statement.  Hegel  also  ap- 
pears to  take  the  same  view.  (He  says  that  ^'^ 
"  pure  bemg  is  pure  nothing,"  which  comes  -^ 
near  to  being  pure  nonsense.]  Renan  be- 
longs to  this  school,  apparently,  and  in  a 
book  which  he  wrote  a  good  while  ago  he 
made  use  of  this  expression,  "  Our  Father, 
the  Abyss!  "  Our  Father,  the  Abyss  !  Or- 
phaned indeed  must  he  be  who  can  find 
neither  in  the  universe  nor  above  it  any 
Father  but  an  abyss,  bottomless,  boundless, 
sightless,  thoughtless. 


24  THE  LORD'S  PRAYER. 

Now  right  over  against  these  mystical 
absurdities,  this  system  which  confounds 
God  and  nature,  is  the  blessed  truth  of  the 
text  told  in  this  word  Father,  —  one  word 
that  is  worth  as  much  more  than  all  the 
scholastic  arguments  of  Pantheism  as  bread 
is  worth  more  than  stones  to  a  hungry 
man. 

O  you  who  are  tired  out  with  the  work 
and  the  battle  of  this  laborious  life,  and 
are  longing  for  rest  and  home  and  love ; 
you  who  are  saddened  by  losses  and  be- 
reavements here,  and  are  pining  for  conso- 
lation and  sympathy  that  men  cannot  give 
you  ;  you  who  have  found  that  sin  is  too 
strong  for  you,  and  are  crying  out  for  help 
to  overcome  it,  —  are  you  satisfied  when 
men  point  you  to  the  forces  of  nature  or  the 
laws  of  the  moral  universe,  or  worse  than 
all,  to  an  abyss  of  non-existence,  and  tell 
you  to  find  there  the  help  that  you  are  look- 
ing for  ?  This  is  all  that  Pantheism  has 
to  offer  you.  Is  it  enough  ?  It  is  like  of- 
fering to   a   man  who  is   famishing  with 


TEE  ETERNAL  FATHER.  26 

thirst  a  Report  of  the  Water  Commission- 
ers of  some  foreign  city,  printed  in  an  un- 
known tongue. 

I  have  only  time  left  to  touch  in  the  most 
hasty  and  superficial  way  half  a  dozen  in- 
ferences from  this  short  phrase,  each  of 
which  demands  a  full  hour  for  its  adequate 
consideration. 

And  first,  the  truth  contained  in  this  new 
name  of  God  is  the  true  constructive  idea 
in  all  theological  science.  Build  all  your 
theologies  on  this  foundation.  Hold  fast  to 
the  idea  of  uniform  law,  of  a  nature  of 
things  which  God  has  established,  under 
which  sin  is  punished ;  but  when  you  speak 
of  the  personal  character  and  government 
of  God,  of  his  direct  interference  in  the 
affairs  of  men,  of  what  he  does  supernat- 
urally,  in  the  order  of  history,  remember 
that  he  is  our  Father.  The  theologies  of 
the  past  have  been  built  mainly  upon  the 
monarchical  rather  than  the  paternal  idea 
of  God.     In  their  religious  life.,  all  Chris- 


26  THE  LORD'S  PRATER. 

tians  have  kept  hold  of  the  truth  that  God 
is  their  Father ;  in  their  theological  specula- 
tions they  have  chosen  rather  to  emphasize 
the  representation  that  he  is  a  Moral  Gov- 
ernor ;  and  all  their  reasonings  about  his 
administration  have  been  based  upon  this 
idea ;  all  their  statements  and  inferences  of 
what  he  can  do  and  cannot  do,  what  he 
must  do  and  must  not  do,  have  been  drawn 
from  the  analogies  of  human  governments ; 
from  the  rules  of  policy  and  expediency 
that  human  rulers  have  found  it  necessary 
for  them  to  adopt.  This  is  a  very  unsafe 
method  of  reasoning.  The  highest  concep- 
tion of  God  that  the  Bible  gives  us  is  the 
one  that  should  rule  in  all  our  theological 
speculations,  and  that  is  the  conception 
which  Christ  gives  us  in  the  word  Father. 

The  word  suggests  to  us  also  the  dignity 
of  human  nature.  It  is  a  reaffirmation  of 
that  primal  truth  that  we  find  in  the  first 
book  of  the  Bible,  that  man  is  made  in  the 
image  and  likeness  of  God.  "  Behold  what 
manner  of  love  the  Father  has   bestowed 


THE  ETEUNAL  FATHER.  27 

upon  US  that  we  should  be  called  the  sons 
of  God."  He  who  was  before  all  worlds, 
he  whose  will  is  the  source  of  all  laws,  he 
who  is  the  life  of  all  that  live,  the  Omnipo- 
tent, the  Allwise,  the  Eternal  God,  is  our 
Father. 

"  Our  Father."  The  word  not  only  lifts 
up  and  glorifies  every  humblest  human 
creature,  it  binds  together  in  one  brother- 
hood, in  one  family,  all  that  dwell  upon  the 
face  of  the  earth.  It  is  the  grand  leveler 
of  ranks  and  hierarchies  ;  it  is  the  charter 
of  fraternity  ;  it  is  the  prophecy  of  peace 
and  good- will  among  men.  When  you  say 
"  Our  Father,"  whom  do  you  include  in 
that  word  "  our  ?  "  Nay,  whom  do  you 
dare  to  exclude  ?  It  sweeps  us  all  in ;  it 
gathers  into  one  waiting  company  the  king 
and  the  beggar,  the  philosopher  and  the 
hind,  the  Hellene  and  the  Hottentot,  the 
saint  and  the  sinner ;  it  confesses  the  par- 
entage and  the  dignity  and  the  worth  of 
every  human  soul,  and  cries,  in  the  simple 
words  of  Tiny  Tim,  "  God  bless  us  every 


28  THE  LORD'S  PRATER. 

one."  What  a  prayer  this  is  that  reaches 
up  so  high  and  down  so  low  and  forth  so 
far  ;  the  breadth  and  length  and  depth  and 
height  of  whose  simplest  petitions  we  often 
so  feebly  utter  ! 

Again,  what  help  and  inspiration  there 
is  for  us  in  the  thought  of  the  relationship 
here  pointed  out  !  Take  it  home  to  your- 
self, my  brother.  Try  to  make  out  some- 
thing of  what  it  means  when  you  say  that 
God  is  your  Father.  Doubtless  it  means 
a  great  deal.  Doubtless  there  is  more  of 
comfort  and  strength  in  it  than  you  have 
ever  got  out  of  it. 

Mayhap  you  are  despised  and  trodden 
under  foot  of  men,  having  almost  lost  your 
self-respect.  Lift  yourself  up ;  let  no  man 
despise  you  !  God  is  your  Father  !  You 
are  the  heir  of  his  love ;  you  ought  to  be 
a  sharer  in  his  glory. 

You  may  be  in  poverty  and  wretched- 
ness ;  hunger  is  pinching  you  and  toil  is 
wearing  you  out ;  but  do  not  lose  heart ; 
God  is  your  Father  ;  do  not  doubt  that  you 


THE  ETERNAL  FATHER.  29 

fire  just  as  dear  to  Mm  as  those  are  wlio 
have  more  of  this  world's  goods  than  you, 
and  that  the  time  will  come  when  they  as 
well  as  you  will  see  that  it  is  so.  Never 
give  way  to  repining ;  never  suffer  yourself 
to  fall  into  that  state  of  shamefacedness  and 
abjectness  in  which  so  many  of  the  poor 
are  found  ;  never  accept  the  world's  false 
estimates  of  worth.  If  other  men  seem  to 
think  that  because  you  are  poor  you  are 
therefore  of  little  account,  do  not  you  be- 
lieve it.  Remember  that  God  is  your 
Father.  Respect  yourself  for  your  Father's 
sake. 

It  may  be  that  you  are  lamenting  the 
passing  of  those  who  were  very  dear,  and 
that  your  path  lies  through  a  shadow  of 
darkness  that  can  be  felt ;  forget  not  in 
your  sorrow  that  "  like  as  a  father  pitieth 
his  children  so  the  Lord  pitieth  them  that 
fear  him."  He  loves  you  far  more  ten- 
derly than  you  loved  those  that  are  gone  ; 
he  would  not  have  taken  them  from  you 
but  for  wise  and  good  reasons. 


30  THE  LORD'S  PRATER. 

It  may  be  that  you  have  shpped  and  sunk 
into  the  mire  of  some  great  wiclvedness ; 
but  though  men  may  have  turned  their 
backs  on  you  God  has  not  forsaken  you.  If 
there  is  in  your  heart  the  faintest  desire  to 
be  reclaimed  from  your  iniquities,  he  knows 
it  and  deliglits  to  see  it ;  he  will  not  leave 
you  to  perish  in  your  degradation,  but  will 
lift  you  up  and  succor  you  if  you  will  only 
let  him. 

Whoever  you  are,  whatever  your  needs 
and  your  griefs  may  be,  whatever  your  sins 
may  have  been,  this  truth,  that  God  is  your 
Father,  ought  to  be  to  you  a  truth  full  of 
encouragement  and  inspiration. 

"  The  new  charity,"  as  one  of  its  wisest 
apostles  said  in  Boston  the  other  day, 
"  seeks  to  provide  every  needy  family  with 
a  friend."  If  we  could  only  make  every 
needy  family  —  those  needy  ones  that  live 
in  the  palaces,  as  well  as  those  that  live  in 
the  cellars  —  see  that  they  have  one  Friend 
already,  could  make  him  known  to  them, 
could  get  them    to   trust   in    him,  what  a 


TEE  ETERNAL  FATHER.  31 

blessed  light  would  shine  into  many  deso- 
late homes ! 

Here  is  a  young  man  just  setting  out  in 
life.  He  has  his  own  way  to  make,  and  he 
finds  that  the  currents  of  human  selfishness 
and  greed  are  sometimes  hard  to  stem.  He 
sees  that  others  about  him  have  influential 
friends  who  often  help  them  over  hard 
places,  and  he  says  to  himself  sometimes : 
"  I  wish  I  had  a  friend,  some  one  with  ex- 
perience and  influence,  to  whom  I  could  go 
now  and  then ;  not  that  I  want  material 
aid,  but  I  would  like  to  know  some  wise 
and  strong  man  who  would  believe  in  me, 
and  be  glad  when  I  went  right,  and  say  so ; 
and  give  me  moral  rather  than  financial 
backing  in  my  endeavor  to  do  an  honorable 
and  successful  business."  Such  a  friend  a 
young  business  man  sometimes  finds,  and 
Buch  a  friendship  is  often  invaluable. 

This  is  only  an  allegory  by  which  the 
inner  history  of  every  human  soul  is  visibly 
set  forth.  Every  one  who  seeks  the  true 
riches  finds  the  needs  of   a   friend  whose 


32  THE  LORD'S  PBATER. 

counsel  he  may  trust,  on  whose  strength  he 
may  lean.  You  have  such  a  Friend,  my 
brother ;  one  whose  wisdom  is  infinite  and 
whose  resources  are  unfailing  ;  one  who 
believes  in  you,  who  never  loses  his  hold  on 
any  human  soul  so  long  as  there  is  a  spark 
of  good  left  in  it ;  one  who  is  glad  when 
you  do  well,  and  wants  to  do  nothing  so 
much  as  to  help  you  to  do  better ;  one  who 
stoops  to  lift  you  up  when  you  fall,  and  to 
lead  you  out  of  the  ways  of  peril  into  the 
ways  of  safety  ;  one  in  whose  presence  ten 
thousand  mighty  angels,  who  look  always 
on  his  face  and  behold  its  joy,  strike  their 
golden  harps  with  sympathetic  gladness 
whenever  one  sinner  forsakes  his  sin. 

"  Our  Father  in  heaven!''''  Where  it  is 
I  know  not ;  what  it  is  no  man  fully  knows. 
But  it  is  where  Our  Father  is.  And  who- 
ever is  with  him  is  not  far  from  heaven. 
Something  of  the  melody  of  its  music, 
something  of  the  fragrance  and  the  beauty 
of  its  sweet  fields,  steal  into  his  heart  even 
while  he  walks  along  the  dusty  ways  of  this 


THE  ETERNAL  FATHER.  33 

lower  world.  Do  you  fancy  that  there  was 
much  difference  with  Enoch,  say,  between 
the  before  and  the  after?  God  took  hhn 
—  hoio  I  do  not  know  ;  but  though  it  may 
be  a  little  less  grand,  it  is  no  less  sweet  to 
walk  with  God  along  the  humble  paths  of 
daily  duty  than  to  ride  forth  with  him  so 
royally  "  on  cherub  and  on  cherubim."  The 
track  of  that  chariot  I  will  not  try  to  trace  ; 
I  only  care  to  know  that  if  I  am  changed 
into  his  image  through  faith  in  him,  I  shall 
awake  in  his  likeness  and  be  satisfied. 
I 


11. 

THE    SACRED    NAME. 
Hallowed  be  thj'  name.  — Matt.  vi.  9. 

The  fact  that  great  things  have  small 
beginnings  is  as  true  in  morals  as  it  is  in 
biology.  The  deepest  and  most  universal 
moral  sentiments  show  traces  of  a  humble 
origin.  The  love  of  moral  purit}'^  was  nour- 
ished by  habits  of  physical  purity.  Clean- 
liness is  next  to  godliness,  — next  before  it, 
indeed,  in  the  order  of  time.  The  wash- 
ings and  purifications  of  the  Jews  were  a 
ritual  drill,  out  of  which  the  sentiment  of 
moral  purity  was  developed. 

Likewise,  the  great  sentiment  of  rever- 
ence was  planted  in  a  sterile  and  unfriendly 
soil,  and  kept  alive  by  many  merely  formal 
observances.  To  imagine  that  men  in  the 
earliest  ages  had  the  same  kind  of  rever- 
ence for  God  that  good  men  have  in  the 


THE  SACRED  NAME.  35 

present  day  would  be  a  great  error.  They 
were  afraid  of  the  various  manifestations  of 
force  that  they  saw  in  nature ;  but  of  genu- 
ine reverence  they  knew  but  little.  Here 
and  there  a  religious  genius,  like  Abraham 
or  Melchisedek,  gained  some  insight  into 
divine  things ;  but  the  great  majority  had 
but  a  dim  apprehension  of  the  real  char- 
acter of  God,  and  could  not  therefore  have 
felt  any  true  reverence  for  him.  It  was 
possible,  however,  for  these  ignorant  and 
unspiritual  people  to  be  trained  in  certain 
outward  observances  which  would  lead  them 
toward  reverence.  To  this  end  they  were 
instructed  to  hold  the  name  Jehovah  in  scru- 
pulous regard.  It  was  not  freely  spoken  ; 
even  in  reading  the  Scriptures  it  was  passed 
over  in  silence ;  some  other  name  of  God 
less  sacred  was  substituted  for  it.  After  a 
time  the  true  pronunciation  of  this  name  \y 
was  lost  by  the  Jewish  people  themselves, 
and  it  has  never  been  regained.  It  passed 
from  the  lips  of  the  people ;  the  sound  of 
it  was  forgotten  ;    and  scholars  who   have 


86  THE  LORD'S  PRAYER. 

studied  the  documents  and  the  monuments 
of  antiquity  are  at  a  loss  to  determine  what 
the  ol-iginal  pronunciation  was.  Probably, 
however,  it  was  more  nearly  like  Yahveh 
than  like  Jehovah. 

The  result  of  what  seems  to  us  the  super- 
stitious treatment  of  a  name  was,  however, 
the  deepening  in  the  hearts  of  the  people  of 
the  sentiment  of  reverence.  In  having  it 
so  firmly  impressed  upon  their  minds  that 
the  name  of  God  must  not  be  lightly  used, 
they  were  also  made  to  feel  that  the  Person 
and  character  of  God  ought  to  be  honored. 
The  name  stood  for  the  Person.  The  Per- 
son they  could  not  see ;  but  if  they  were 
taught  to  be  silent  in  the  presence  of  his 
name,  they  would  learn  that  his  being,  as 
well  as  the  word  that  represented  it  to 
them,  was  holy. 

The  third  commandment  undoubtedly  in- 
cludes this  thought,  though  I  doubt  if  it  is 
the  principal  thought.  It  is  against  per- 
jury rather  than  profanity  that  the  com- 
mandment is  chiefly  directed.     "  Thou  shalt 


THE  SACRED  NAME.  37 

not  swear  falsely  in  the  name  of  the  Lord  " 
is  the  primary  meaning.  But  the  wrong- 
fulness of  appealing  to  God's  name  lightly 
and  wantonly  is  also  suggested  ;  and  there 
are  many  other  passages  in  the  Levitical 
Law  where  this  sin  is  clearly  forbidden  and 
threatened  with  condign  punishment. 

Under  this- training  there  sprung  up  in 
the  minds  of  devout  Jews  a  certain  rever- 
ence for  the  sacred  name,  which,  under 
more  spiritual  teaching,  should  grow  into 
reverence  for  the  divine  character.  And 
this  teaching  our  Lord  is  now  supplying. 
^"'^  What  name  is  this  that  He  is  teaching  us 
to  hallow  in  our  prayers  ?  God  had  been 
known  thus  far  by  many  names.  He  was 
first  revealed  as  Elohim,  the  God  of  nature, 
the  Creator,  —  a  name  to  which  in  the 
early  Scriptures  no  moral  attributes  are  at- 
tached. He  was  known  also  to  the  early 
patriarchs  as  El-Schaddai  —  the  God  Al- 
mighty. He  was  known  also  as  the  Holy 
One  of  Israel,  —  and  as  the  Lord  of  Hosts. 
Above  all,    He   declared  himself    by   that 


38  THE  LORD'S  PRAYER. 

name  of  which  we  have  been  speaking, 
which  in  our  version  is  rendered  Jehovah, 
—  or  for  which  the  word  Lord  in  small 
capitals  is  substituted,  —  which  seems  to 
mean  the  Self-existent  and  Eternal  Being. 
And  now  Jesus  teaches  us  to  address  him 
as  our  Father.  Which  of  these  names  are 
we  here  bidden  to  hallow  ? 

As  soon  as  we  ask  this  question  it  at 
once  becomes  plain  that  "  name "  is  not 
used  here  in  the  narrow  verbal  sense  of 
which  we  have  been  speaking,  but  in  a 
wider  and  larger  sense.  It  is  not  merely 
the  letters  and  syllables  that  spell  the  name 
by  which  God  is  known  that  our  Lord 
teaches  us  here  to  sanctify.  The  petition 
includes,  I  suppose,  all  the  names  by  which 
God  has  revealed  himself.  As  the  God  of 
Nature,  as  the  Lord  Almighty,  as  the  Lord 
of  Sabbaoth,  as  the  Holy  One  of  Israel,  as 
the  Eternal  and  Self-existent  One,  as  the 
Heavenly  Father,  in  all  the  characters  that 
he  bears,  he  is  to  be  reverenced  and  glori- 
fied. 


THE  SACRED  NAME.  39 

There  is  no  word  that  is  large  enough  to 
hold  all  the  truth  that  God  has  told  men 
about  himself.  Pie  must  needs  choose  many 
different  words- under  which  to  declare  to 
men  different  attributes  and  phases  of  his 
own  character.  And  when  all  these  words 
are  uttered  the  half  is  not  told. 

"  Join  all  the  glorious  names 
Of  wisdom,  love,  and  power 
That  mortals  ever  kuM^ 
That  angels  ever  bore ; 
All  are  too  mean  to  speak  his  worth, 
Too  mean  to  set  his  glories  forth!  " 

And  it  is  not  only  by  words  that  he  has 
made  himself  known.  In  the  order  and  the 
beauty  of  the  universe  he  discloses  himself; 
signs  of  his  presence  and  proofs  of  his  power 
are  shown  us  in  the  tilings  that  he  has  made 
that  no  words  could  ever  have  given  us. 

"The  Lord  our  God  is  Lord  of  all, 
His  station  who  can  find? 
I  hear  him  in  the  waterfall, 
I  hear  him  in  the  wind. 

"If  in  the  gloom  of  night  I  shroud, 
His  face  I  cannot  fly; 


40  THE  LORD'S  PRAYER. 

I  see  him  in  the  evening  cloud 
And  in  the  morning  sky." 

And  not  only  in  tbe  words  of  the  Book 
and  tlie  laws  and  lives  of  the  world  does  he 
display  himself  to  discerning  minds,  but 
also  in  the  movements  of  the  race  ;  in  the 
slowly  unfolding  plans  of  his  loving  provi- 
dence ;  in  the  increasing  purpose  that  runs 
through  the  ages.  And  he  who  stands  with 
reverent  spirit  4n  the  track  of  the  world's 
progress,  and  who  knows  enough  of  the  past 
to  have  any  sense  of  historical  perspective, 
may  well  cry  out :  — 

"  0  God,  our  God,  thou  shinest  here, 
Thine  own  this  latter  day; 
To  us  thy  radiant  steps  appear; 
Here  beams  thy  glorious  ray. 

"The  fathers  had  not  all  of  thee; 
*  New  births  are  in  thy  grace; 

All  open  to  our  souls  shall  be 
Thy  glory's  hiding-place. 

"Thou  comest  near;  thou  standest  by; 
Our  work  begins  to  shine: 
Thou  dweliest  with  us  mightily ; 
On  speed  the  years  divine  I " 


TEE  SACRED  NAME.  41 

And  not  only  in  the  names  by  which  the 
Bible  describes  him,  and  in  the  forms  in 
which  the  creation  reveals  him,  and  in  the 
events  by  which  history  unveils  his  pres- 
ence, but  also  in  the  person  of  him  who 
was  the  brightness  of  his  glory  and  the  ex- 
press image  of  his  person,  who  is  the  Word, 
that  reveals  God  to  men  ;  who  could  say  of 
himself,  "  He  that  hath  seen  me  hath  seen 
the  Father,"  is  God  made  known  to  men. 

"Son  of  the  Father!     Lord  most  high! 
How  glad  is  he  who  finds  thee  nigh! 
Come  in  thy  hidden  majesty; 
Fill  us  with  love,  fill  us  with  thee." 

And  not  only  in  the  written  word,  and 
in  the  created  universe,  and  in  the  broaden- 
ing stream  of  progress,  and  in  the  person  of 
his  Son,  but  also  in  the  heart  of  the  hum- 
ble and  contrite  believer,  does  God  reveal 
himself. 

"  Oh  not  in  circling  depth  or  height, 

But  in  the  conscious  breast,  — 
Present  to  faith  though  veiled  from  sight, 

There  doth  his  spirit  rest; 
Oh  come  thou  Presence  infinite 

And  make  thy  creatures  blest." 


42  THE  LORD'S  PRAYER. 

And  these  are  only  parts  of  the  ways  in 
which  the  Infinite  One  unveils  his  glories 
to  the  thought  of  his  children.  Indeed  we 
may  say  that  the  whole  of  creation,  the 
whole  of  providence,  the  whole  of  history, 
is  simply  God's  method  of  revealing  him- 
self. The  things  that  are,  the  forces  that 
work,  the  events  that  take  place,  are  only 
manifestations  of  the  power  and  wisdom 
and  love  of  the  infinite  God.  Because  of 
the  perverseness  of  human  wills  and  the 
corruption  of  human  natures  this  manifes- 
tation is  often  imperfect ;  we  see  as  through 
a  glass,  darklj'' ;  but  the  dimness  is  not  in 
the  light  that  shines,  it  is  in  the  medium 
through  which  it  shines ;  these  refracted 
and  broken  rays  disclose  to  us  all  that  we 
are  able  to  receive  of  the  glory  and  beauty 
of  the  Eternal  God  our  Father. 

Now  the  name  of  God  includes  all  by 

^  which   he  is  or  may  be  known  to  us.     It 

is  not  only  in  the  sub-vocal  consonants  of 

the  Hebrew  tongue  that  it  is  spelled  ;   in 

the  shining  alphabet  of   crystals   and  the 


THE  SACRED  NAME.  48 

rucle  forms  of  fossils  the  geologist  writes  it 
for  us ;  with  pencil  of  starlight  the  as- 
tronomer inscribes  it  upon  the  sky ;  the 
flowers  are  a  bright  anthology  that  pre- 
serve for  us  part  of  its  secret ;  the  fall  and 
the  rising  again  of  empires  and  dynasties 
are  the  solemn  articulations  by  which  its 
majesty  is  syllabled;  the  character  of  the 
Son  of  Man  is  a  perfect  utterance  of  it  in 
the  language  of  the  human  life,  and  the 
Comforter  who  comes  in  his  name  trans- 
lates that  for  us  into  the  terms  of  every- 
day experience. 

Now  as  I  understand  this  first  petition  it 
includes  the  thought  that  all  these  distinct 
but  conspiring  revelations  of  God  are  to  be 
reverenced.  Whatever  helps  us  to  a  fuller 
knowledge  of  him  —  his  nature,  his  charac- 
ter, his  purposes,  his  works  —  ought  to  be 
held  sacred.  All  these  forms  of  truth,  all 
these  methods  of  disclosure  by  which  he  is 
seeking  to  make  himself  known,  should  be 
reverently  treated.  It  is  not  only  that  part 
of  his  name  which  is  given  to  us  in  the 


44  THE  LORD'S  PRATER. 

Bible,  but  every  other  part  of  his  name 
that  we  have  learned,  or  that  he  has  sought 
to  communicate  to  us,  that  we  ought  to  hal- 
low. And  the  men  who  contemn  or  even 
ignore  the  truths  of  science  or  the  facts  of 
history  or  the  witness  of  the  Christian  con- 
sciousness cannot  offer  this  prayer  without 
judging  themselves. 

"  Whoever  is  afraid  of  science,"  says  the 
Rev.  Newman  Smyth,  "  does  not  believe  in 
God.  Though  the  truths  which  the  sev- 
eral sciences  have  discovered  in  the  various 
fields  of  inquiry  are  with  difficulty  brought 
together  and  harmonized  ;  though  the  facts 
of  nature,  history,  and  consciousness  lie 
before  our.  reason,  often  uncovered  and 
broken,  like  those  fragments  of  Assyrian 
records  which  have  been  thrown  together 
in  the  British  Museum ;  we  should,  never- 
theless, regard  every  one  of  them  as  of 
value,  and  as  having  its  own  place  and 
worth  in  the  record  of  God's  creative  pur- 
pose, which,  some  day,  we  may  hope  not 
merely   to   decipher   in    syllables    and    to 


THE  SACRED  NAME.  45 

know  in  part,  but  to  comprehend  in  its 
length  and  its  breadth,  and  to  read  as  one 
grand  connected  story."  ^ 

But  the  name  of  God  stands  for  God 
himself,  and  I  suppose  that  when  we  intel- 
ligently offer  this  prayer  we  express  the 
desire  not  only  that  the  various  revelations 
which  God  has  made  to  men  may  be  rev- 
erently treated,  but  that  God  himself  may 
be  honored  in  our  thoughts  and  in  our  con- 
duct. 

To  hallow  is  either  to  make  holy  or  to 
consider  and  recognize  as  holy.  We  can- 
not by  our  words  nor  by  our  deeds  add  any 
essential  holiness  to  the  Holy  One  of  Israel ; 
but  we  can  think  holy  thoughts  about  him; 
we  can  sanctify  him  in  our  hearts. 

We  all  believe  that  there  is  only  one 
God  in  heaven ;  but  there  is  another  sense 
in  which  it  is  true  that  every  man  wor- 
ships a  God  of  his  own,  unlike  the  God  in 
heaven,  unlike  the  deities  worshiped  by 
his   fellows.     For  no  man's  conception  of 

1   Old  Faiths  in  New  Light,  p.  24. 


46  THE  LORD'S  PRAYER. 

God  is  perfect ;  and  the  character  -which 
each  man  ascribes  to  God  is  bhirred  by  his 
own  ignorance  and  distorted  by  his  own 
imagination.  There  is  only  one  President 
Hayes  in  Washington  ;  but  the  President 
Hayes  whom  you  think  of  when  I  speak 
his  name  may  be  a  very  different  man  from 
the  one  I  think  of,  and  both  may  be  very 
different  from  the  reality.  If  each  one  of 
the  citizens  of  the  United  States  could  give 
an  accurate  mental  photograph  of  the  Pres- 
ident, as  he  conceives  his  character,  we 
should  have  a  great  variety  of  pictures. 

Now  the  conceptions  of  the  character  of 
God  that  men  entertain  differ  far  more 
than  their  conceptions  of  the  character  of 
their  fellow-men,  because  the  range  of 
thought  is  wider;  elements  of  mystery  en- 
ter in  that  do  not  enter  into  men's  esti- 
mates of  their  neighbors  ;  and  while  every 
rej)resentation  that  men  can  make  to  them- 
selves of  the  Infinite  Father  must  be  im- 
perfect and  unworthy  of  him,  yet  some  are 
far  more  imperfect  than  others.     And  in 


THE  SACRED  NAME.  47 

this  petition  we  are  taught  to  ask  that  onr 
thoughts  of  God  may  be  freed  from  error 
and  cleansed  from  corruption  ;  that  our  con- 
ception of  his  character  may  be  corrected 
and  enlarged  and  hallowed,  so  that  it  shall 
come  nearer  to  the  ineffable  divine  reality. 

Every  man's  religion,  every  man's  .char- 
acter, will  greatly  depend  upon  his  thought 
of  God.  If  God  is  to  him  a  tyrant,  the 
mere  incarnation  of  will,  whose  justice  is 
the  simple  impulse  to  destroy  all  creatures 
that  transgress  his  law,  then  the  man's  re- 
ligion must  needs  be  a  slavish  worship  and 
a  groveling  fear.  If,  on  the  other  hand, 
God  is  to  him  a  good-natured  and  weakly 
indulgent  Father,  who  does  not  care  much 
whether  his  children  do  right  or  wrong, 
and  who  expends  the  resources  of  his  om- 
nipotence in  preserving  them  from  the  de- 
struction which  they  court  by  their  mis- 
deeds, the  religion  of  this  man  will  be  apt 
to  be  simple  recklessness ;  he  will  stifle 
Paul's  indignant  scruple,  and  continue  in 
sin  that  grace  may  abound.     And  whatever 


^ 


48  THE  LORD'S  PRATER. 

defect  we  ascribe  to  God  in  our  thought,  not 
only  our  theologies  but  our  lives  are  likely 
to  be  perverted  by  it.  It  is  therefore  of 
the  very  fii'st  importance  that  our  thought 
of  God  should  be  a  large  and  pure  and 
worthy  thought;  that  we  do  not  belittle 
and  dishonor  him  by  our  imaginations. 
And  by  no  petition  that  we  can  utter  can 
we  express  a  deeper  need  of  our  lives  than 
we  do  by  this  petition  that  God  may  be 
hallowed  in  our  thoughts. 

But  how  shall  we  who  are  unholy  think 
holy  thoughts  of  God  ?  Must  not  the 
thought  be  as  the  thinker  ?  How  can  a 
pure  stream  issue  from  an  impure  source? 
Is  it  possible  for  us,  by  any  energy  of  our 
own,  to  correct  the  aberrations  of  our  men- 
tal vision  and  replace  the  distorted  images 
of  God  that  fill  our  minds  with  those  that 
more  perfectly  represent  him?  Certainly 
not ;  and,  therefore,  this  is  a  prayer  for  di- 
vine illumination  and  cleansing ;  for  the 
gift  of  that  Spirit  which  searcheth  all 
things,  yea,  the  deep  things  of  God,  and  re- 


TEE  SACRED  NAME.  49 

veals  them  unto  men.  It  is  a  prayer  that 
God  himself  will  come  to  us,  and  abide  in 
our  thoughts,  and  make  himself  known  to 
us  in  all  his  glorious  holiness. 

But  the  name  of  the  Lord  is  hallowed, 
not  only  by  treating  with  reverence  the 
revelations  that  he  has  made  of  himself, 
and  by  thinking  pure  and  worthy  thoughts 
about  him,  but  also  by  adding,  as  we  can, 
to  the  respect  and  honor  in  which  his  name 
is  held  among  men.  God  as  well  as  men 
has  a  name  —  that  is  to  say,  a  reputation 
—  in  the  earth.  He  is  held  by  all  his  chil- 
dren in  a  certain  estimation.  And  it  is  of 
great  consequence  that  this  name  that  he 
bears  be  an  honorable  and  illustrious  name ; 
that  what  men  call  his  declarative  glory  be 
promoted.  It  is  not  only  important  that 
you  and  I  think  worthy  thoughts  about 
him,  it  is  important  also  that  we  do  all  we 
can  to  increase  the  honor  in  which  he  is 
held. 

Every  dutiful  child  wishes  his  father  to 
be  honored  by  all  who  know  him.    The  tes- 

4 


50  THE  LORD'S  PRATER. 

timonies  of  others  to  his  father's  worth 
fill  liim  with  thankfulness  ;  any  injury  that 
threatens  his  father's  reputation  causes  him 
ipain.  And  so  the  true  child  of  God  desires 
that  all  men  should  love  and  revere  liis 
Father  in  heaven ;  that  not  only  the  goodly 
j  fellowship  of  the  prophets,  and  the  noble 
!  army  of  martyrs,  and  the  glorious  company 
of  the  apostles,  with  cherubim  and  sera- 
phim should  praise  him,  but  that  all  men 
everywhere  should  honor  him ;  that  earth 
as  well  as  heaven  should  be  filled  with  the 
majesty  of  his  glory.  So  when  we  pray 
that  his  name  may  be  hallowed,  this  is  part 
of  what  we  pray  for,  —  that  not  only  in  our 
own  thoughts  but  in  the  thoughts  of  all  men 
he  may  be  honored  ;  that  not  only  by  our 
own  lips  but  by  the  lips  of  all  to  whom  he 
has  given  breath  his  praises  may  be  sung. 
That  is  the  wish  that  finds  voice  in  this 
petition.  Is  there  anything  that  we  can  do 
toward  bringing  it  to  pass  ? 

Most  of    the   prayers    that  we  offer  we 
have  something  to  do  with  answering.    Can 


THE  SACRED  NAME.  51 

we  help  to  answer  this  one  ?  Assuredly  we 
can,  and  it  is  one  chief  part  of  our  duty 
as  children  of  the  Heavenly  Father.  The 
old  catechism  says  that  man's  chief  end 
is  to  glorify  God  and  enjoy  him  forever. 
And  there  is  much  that  we  can  do  to  show 
forth  the  honor  of  his  name,  and  make 
his  praise  glorious. 

1.  We  cause  his  name  to  be  hallowed 
in  the  earth  by  telling  the  truth  about 
him.  When,  by  his  indwelling  in  our  own 
lives,  we  are  enabled  to  think  true  and 
worthy  thoughts  about  him,  then  we  may 
tell  these  thoughts  to  others.  The  truth 
about  him,  when  it  is  known,  can  only 
add  to  the  lustre  of  his  name.  And  one 
reason  why  many  men  do  not  hallow  his 
name  is  simply  that  they  do  not  understand 
his  character.  They  have  been  told  many 
things  about  him  that  are  not  true.  If 
the  things  that  they  have  been  told  toere 
true,  they  could  not  glorify  him  in  their 
thoughts,  they  could  not  even  respect  him. . 

Coming  out  of  a  place  of  worship  some 


62  THE  LORD'S  PRATER. 

time  ago,  I  met  a  man  in  a  very  angry 
frame  of  mind.  The  preacher  had  been 
representing  God  as  acting  upon  certain 
principles  that  are  palpably  unjust  and 
wrong  —  as  doing  things  that  any  civil 
magistrate  would  be  execrated  for  doing. 
"  If  that  is  the  kind  of  God  that  you  peo- 
ple worship,"  said  the  angry  hearer,  "  I 
wish  to  know  notliing  more  about  him." 
Of  course  I  could  do  nothing  else  but  tell 
him  that  the  statements  of  the  preacher, 
though  made  in  good  faith,  were  incorrect ; 
that  God  was  never  known  to  act  upon  the 
principles  imputed  to  him.  But  it  was 
certainly  a  very  unfortunate  thing  that  this 
preacher,  who  was  a  good  man,  should  have 
represented  God  to  his  hearers  in  a  way 
that  caused  the  moral  sense  of  some  of  the 
most  thoughtful  of  them  to  revolt.  You 
are  not  hallowing  the  name  of  God  when 
you  make  statements  about  him  which  give 
the  impression  that  he  is  unjust  or  tyran- 
nical or  cruel.  The  truth  about  him  will 
not  make  such  an  impression  of  his  char- 


THE  BACRED  NAME.  53 

acter  upon  any  rational  creature.  Let  us 
be  careful,  if  we  wish  to  promote  the  honor 
of  his  name,  to  say  nothing  about  him  that 
is  not  true. 

2.  We  can  cause  his  name  to  be  hal- 
lowed, also,  by  showing  men  that  we  honor 
and  love  him.  Good  sentiments  as  well  as 
bad  sentiments  are  contagious.  A  sincere 
and  honest  reverence  for  God  will  commu- 
nicate itself  to  other  minds.  If  our  neigh- 
bors see  that  we  do  hold  his  name  and 
character  in  high  regard,  they  will  be  in- 
clined to  feel  that  he  is  worthy  of  the  honor 
we  give  him. 

I  saw  once  in  Broadway,  from  a  window 
where  I  sat  (and  the  thing  has  been  seen 
more  than  once),  a  cluster  of  men  stand- 
ing and  looking  at  a  certain  quarter  of  the 
sky  for  an  hour  or  two.  What  were  they 
looking  at?  Nobody  seemed  to  know  ex- 
actly. The  general  impression  was  that 
they  were  trying  to  see  one  of  the  planets, 
Jupiter  or  Mars,  which  was  bright  enough 
to  be  visible  by  daylight.     Who  had  gath- 


54  THE  LORD'S  PRAYEfiT 

ered  this  group  ?  Nobody.  Two  men  had 
stopped  on  the  sidewalk  and  had  begun  to 
look  steadfastly  into  the  sky.  Presently 
some  one  joined  them,  and  another  and 
another,  all  looking  in  the  same  direction, 
some  shading  their  eyes,  some  rolling  their 
newspapers  into  telescopic  tubes  and  peer- 
ing through  them.  Not  many  questions 
would  be  asked  by  the  members  of  such  a 
group  in  New  York ;  but  somebody  con- 
jectured that  it  was  a  star  that  they  were 
looking  for,  and  said  so,  and  that  conjecture 
was  passed  from  one  to  another,  and  served 
as  the  only  organic  idea  that  the  assem- 
blage possessed.  The  two  men  whose  cu- 
riosity, whether  real  or  feigned,  was  the 
origin  of  the  collection  soon  passed  on  ;  no- 
body stayed  long,  but  as  one  after  another 
walked  away  with  a  puzzled  or  amused 
expression  of  countenance,  their  places 
would  be  filled  by  others  who  would  be 
drawn  into  the  little  circle  by  the  force  of 
what  the  phrenologists  would  call  imita- 
tiveness,  —  by  the  simple  disposition  to  do 


THE  SACRED  NAME.  55 

things  which  we  see  other  people  doing. 
This  was  the  only  cause  of  this  little  shift- 
ing group  of  men  and  boys  that  kept  its 
place  for  a  good  while  in  the  busy  street, 
into  which  some  hundreds  of  men  must  have 
been  drawn,  and  which  caused  thousands 
who  did  not  pause  to  cast  their  eyes  up- 
ward in  the  same  direction. 

Now,  if  this  principle  of  human  nature 
can  produce  such  a  striking  result  with  so 
slight  materials,  it  can  surely  be  made  to 
serve  the  higher  interests  of  truth.  If  so 
many  men  can  be  made  to  look  up  into  the 
sky  so  steadfastly  when  there  is  nothing  to 
be  seen,  simply  because  they  see  others  gaz- 
ing that  way,  they  who  look  up  steadfastly 
into  heaven  and  behold  the  glory  of  the 
Lord  may  be  able  to  turn  the  eyes  of  oth- 
ers in  the  same  direction.  The  unconscious 
influence  of  reverent  hearts  and  praising 
lives  will  help  to  lift  the  thoughts  of  others 
to  the  same  sublime  realities. 

3.  Of  praising  lives,  I  said.  For  it  is  not 
chiefly  by  the  reverent  demeanor  and  the 


66  TEE  LOED'8  PRAYER. 

devout  speech  of  God's  children  that  the 
glory  of  their  father  is  promoted,  but  by 
the  fidelity  and  nobility  and  beauty  of  their 
conduct.  We  who  offer  this  prayer  profess 
to  be  his  children.  "  Our  Father,"  we  say. 
That  is  an  acknowledgment  of  our  relation 
to  him,  of  our  duty  to  him.  If  we  pro- 
claim that  he  is  our  Father,  then  those 
who  do  not  acknowledge  him  will  look. to 
see  what  manner  of  spirit  we  are  of.  Chil- 
dren are  expected  to  resemble  their  parents, 
in  their  characters  as  well  as  in  their  feat- 
ures. And  if  in  our  lives  men  see  the  pu- 
rity and  truth,  the  manliness  and  honor,  the 
fidelity  and  charity  that  do  belong  to  all 
who  learn  of  him  and  abide  in  his  fellow- 
ship and  are  transformed  into  his  image, 
they  cannot  help  honoring  him  in  whom 
we  live  and  move  and  have  our  beina;. 
"  The  Christian,"  Professor  Christlieb  says, 
"is  the  world's  Bible."  The  Christian 
shows  men  in  his  own  life  the  beauty  and 
the  loveliness  of  the  divine  nature.  And 
we  who  pray  that  God's  name  may  be  hal- 


THE  SACRED  NAME.  57 

lowed  and  held  in  reverence  can  answer 
our  own  prayer  in  no  more  effectual  way 
than  by  keeping  our  lives  so  clean  and 
bright  that  they  may  reflect  his  glory. 

This  first  petition  of  the  Lord's  Prayer, 
•without  saying  anything  about  it,  deals  a 
most  effective  blow  at  the  central  evil  in 
human  nature  —  our  selfishness.  Men  are 
apt  to  be  nearly  as  selfish  in  their  religion, 
nearly  as  egoistic  in  their  prayers,  as  in 
any  other  part  of  their  lives.  But  this  pe- 
tition turns  their  thoughts  wholly  away 
from  themselves.  "  Our  Father  who  art  in 
heaven,"  we  say  ;  and  now  that  our  thought 
is  lifted  up  to  the  Infinite  Giver  what  shall 
we  ask  for  first?  For  the  easing  of  our 
pains,  the  supply  of  our  wants,  the  pardon 
of  our  sins,  the  saving  of  our  souls,  the  wel- 
fare of  our  friends  ?  No  ;  these  are  things 
to  ask  for,  but  not  first.  "  Hallowed  be 
thy  name  !  "  Away  from  ourselves  to  God 
our  thought  is  quickly  turned.  "Begin  to 
pray,"  this  petition  says,  "by  ceasing  to 
think  of  yourselves  ;  by  remembering  that 


68  THE  LORD'S  PRATER. 

your  small  personality  is  not  the  centre 
round  which  this  universe  revolves.  "  Seek 
first  the  Kingdom  of  God  and  his  righteous- 
ness," is  the  Master's  great  command,  and 
here  he  frames  it  into  the  first  petition  of 
the  prayer  that  is  to  be  always  on  our  lips. 
After  this  manner  therefore  pray  ye.  Self 
must  be  the  fulcrum  on  which  your  prayer 
will  rest,  but  it  is  not  the  power  that  lifts 
you  heavenward. ''^  It  is  by  looking  out,  and 
not  in,  by  looking  up,  and  not  down,  that 
a  man  escapes  from  the  bondage  of  sin  into 
the  liberty  of  the  sons  of  God. 


in. 

THE   ETERNAL    KINGDOM. 
Thy  Kingdom  come.  —  RIatt.  vi.  10. 

What  is  the  Kingdom  of  God  for  whose 
coming  we  are  taught  to  pray  in  this  sec- 
ond petition  of  the  Lord's  Prayer?  The 
phrase  is  used  with  a  variety  of  meanings  in 
the  New  Testament,  sometimes  in  a  narrow 
sense  as  signifying  phases  of  individual  ex- 
perience, sometimes  in  a  large  sense  as  in- 
cluding all  that  the  world  has  known  or  can 
know  of  the  power  and  the  love  of  God. 
We  must  suppose  that  the  phrase  is  used 
here  in  its  largest  sense.  It  is  not  likely 
that  in  so  brief  a  prayer  as  this  any  partial 
meaning  would  be  given  to  the  words  em- 
ployed. 

The  orthodox  Jews  had  a  very  narrow 
idea  of  what  the  Kingdom  of  God  was  to 
be.    They  thought  that  it  was  simply  a  po- 


60  THE  LORD'S  PRATER. 

litical  machine  to  be  set  up  at  Jerusalem  — 
a  monarchy,  with  a  King  designated  b}'-  di- 
vine power,  under  which  the  autonomy  of 
the  Jewish  nation  would  be  restored,  the 
Romans  banished  from  the  Holy  Land, 
and  the  territorial  inheritance  promised 
to  Abraham  occupied  by  his  descendants. 
This  was  what  they  were  looking  for ;  this 
was  the  Messiah's  Kingdom  as  they  con- 
ceived and  expected  it.  Certain  Pharisees 
with  this  thought  in  their  minds  came  to 
our  Lord  one  day,  and  demanded  of  him 
when  the  Kingdom  of  God  should  come. 
He  answered  them  and  said,  "  The  King- 
dom of  God  Cometh  not  with  observa- 
tion." "  Comes  not,"  as  Robinson  explains 
this  phrase,  "  so  that  its  progress  may  be 
watched  with  the  eyes."  "  Neither  shall 
they  say  '  Lo  here  !  or,  lo  there  ! '  "  "  None 
shall  be  able,"  says  Alford,  "  to  point  here 
pr  there  for  a  proof  of  its  coming."  It  is 
not  a  matter  of  locality.  Palestine  is  not 
the  territory  of  its  dominion  ;  Jerusalem  is 
not   the   seat  of  its  power.     "  Behold  the 


THE  ETERNAL  KINGDOM.  61 

Kingdom  of  God  is  within  you !  "  "  The 
Saviour,"  says  Olshausen,  "withdraws  the 
Kingdom  of  God  wholly  from  the  local  and 
phenomenal  world  and  transfers  it  to  the 
world  of  spirit." 

This,  then,  is  our  Lord's  answer  to  the 
Pharisees ;  and  it  may  be  instructive  to 
many-  in  this  day  whose  faith  clings  to  a 
material  kingdom,  who  are  waiting  to  hear 
some  one  say  "  Lo  here!  or,  lo  there!" 

"  The  Kingdom  of  God,"  says  Paul  in 
his  letter  to  the  Romans,  "  is  not  meat  and 
drink."  No ;  and  it  is  nothing  that  sub- 
sists on  meat  and  drink.  Flesh  and  blood 
do  not  inherit  it,  neither  in  this  world  nor 
in  the  world  to  come.  The  throne  of  its 
empire,  the  weapons  of  its  warfare,  are  not 
carnal.  What  is  it,  then  ?  "  It  is  right- 
eousness and  peace  and  joy  in  the  Holy 
Ghost."  That  is  Paul's  definition  of  the 
Kingdom  of  God.  The  Saviour  tells  us 
where  it  is.  It  is  not  in  Jerusalem ;  it  is 
not  visible  anywhere  to  mortal  eyes  ;  it  is 
unseen   and   spiritual.     It   is   within    you. 


62  THE  LORD'S  PRAYER. 

Paul  tells  us  Avhat  it  is.  It  is  not  meat  and 
drink,  —  it  is  not  any  material  or  earthly 
organization  with  a  visible  head  ;  it  is  right- 
eousness and  peace  and  joy  in  the  Holy 
Ghost. 

The  Kingdom  of  God  is  then  in  its  es- 
sence a  spiritual  Kingdom ;  the  seat  of  his 
dominion  is  in  the  thoughts  and  affections 
of  men ;  the  tokens  of  its  sway  are  a  deep- 
ening purity,  and  a  growing  love  among  the 
children  of  men.  Of  course  it  takes  hold 
on  things  outward,  also,  and  shapes  them 
by  its  law,  as  we  shall  see  by  and  by;  it 
changes  the  manners  and  the  fashions  and 
the  laws  and  the  social  relations  of  men ;  it 
is  not  in  its  essence  meat  and  drink,  but  it 
rules  the  lives  of  men  who  are  its  loyal  sub- 
jects whether  they  eat  or  drink  or  what- 
ever they  do.  Still  it  affects  the  forms  and 
fashions  of  life  only  as  it  transforms  the 
thoughts  and  the  desires  of  men;  it  works 
from  within  outward  ;  its  forces  are  all  spir- 
itual, though  its  manifestations  are  visible 
in  all  the  realms  of  life.     And  it  includes 


THE  ETERNAL  KINGDOM.  63 

everything  that  is  true,  everything  that  is 
pure,  everything  that  is  lovely,  everything 
that  is  honest  and  brave  and  sound  and 
sweet  in  the  universe.  Whatsoever  is  good 
is  of  God,  and  is  a  sign  of  the  rule  of  his 
Kingdom  in  the  world.  Whatever  shows 
improvement  —  whether  it  is  from  good  to 
better,  or  from  worse  to  better  —  is  a  token 
of  the  progress  of  God's  Kingdom  in  the 
world.  Wherever  morality  and  purity  are 
gaining,  wherever  the  vile  are  becoming 
less  vile,  and  the  cruel  less  cruel,  and  the 
covetous  less  covetous,  there  the  Kingdom 
of  God  is  advancing.  "  There  is  none  good 
but  one,  that  is  God,"  said  our  Lord  him- 
self ;  and  there  is  no  good  in  any  man,  from 
the  feeblest  virtue  in  the  worst  man  to  the 
grandest  integrity  in  the  best  man,  —  there 
is  no  good  in  any  beneficent  institution  or 
in  any  kindly  custom  or  in  any  refinement 
of  social  life,  —  that  is  not  a  divine  inspi- 
ration; that  is  not  the  result  of  obedience 
to  the  divine  law;  that  is  not,  therefore,  a 
token  of  the  presence  and  the  prevalence  in 
some  degree  of  God's  Kingdom. 


64  THE  LORD'S  PRATER. 

When  we  intelligently  offer  this  petition, 
then,  we  are  asking  for  nothing  less  than 
this  —  that  the  light  and  love  and  power  of 
God  may  increase  and  abound  everywhere 
in  the  world. 

I  do  not  think  we  have  the  right  to  give 
the  words  any  narrower  meaning  than  this. 

"  God's  Kingdom  is  here  already,  then," 
some  one  may  say ;  "  why  should  we  be 
taught  to  pray  for  the  coming  of  it  ?  To 
say  '  Thy  Kingdom  come  '  is  to  imply  that 
it  is  not  here." 

To  this  question  various  answers  are 
given.  To  one  of  the  most  common  of 
these  we  have  referred  already.  When 
we  pray,  "  Thy  Kingdom  come,"  some  say 
we  are  praying  for  the  second  coming  of 
Christ.  But  they  who  thus  distinguish  be- 
tween the  Father  and  the  Son  must  re- 
member that  this  is  a  prayer  which  the 
Son  bids  us  address  to  the  Father.  If  there 
is  any  difference  between  the  Father's 
Kingdom  and  the  Son's  Kingdom,  it  is  the 


THE  ETERNAL  KINGDOM.  65 

Father's  Kingdom  and  not  the  Son's  whose 
coming  we  here  supplicate.  Besides,  as  it 
has  been  intimated,  we  can  hardly  suppose" 
that  this  sjDecial  sense  would  be  given  to  a 
petition  meant  to  be  as  comprehensive  as 
this  one.  It  is  far  more  natural  to  give  it 
a  broader  meaning. 

Others  say  that  this  is  a  prayer  for  the 
organization  of  Christianity.  The  King- 
dom here  intended,  says  one  learned  com- 
mentator, is  "  the  Messiah's  Kingdom,  which 
in  organized  form  had  not  yet  come,  but 
was  proclaimed  by  the  Lord  himself  as  at 
hand."  But  I  do  not  think  that  our  Lord 
ever  cared  so  much  for  organization  as  to 
make  the  fashioning  of  a  form  of  church 
government  one  of  the  main  things  to  be 
prayed  for  in  so  short  a  prayer  as  this. 
No  doubt  organization  is  important ;  but 
it  is  altogether  secondary,  and  secondary 
things  are  not  provided  for  in  this  prayer. 
Besides,  the  church  was  organized  in  Jeru- 
salem after  the  Pentecost,  and  it  has  al- 
ways had  an  organization  since.  What- 
6 


66  THE  LORD'S  PRAYER. 

ever  other  defects  may  have  been  charged 
upon  it,  it  has  not  often  been  deficient  in 
organization  since  that  day.  It  has  gen- 
erally had  machinery  enough,  far  too  much. 
So  that  this  petition  must  have  been  practi- 
cally obsolete  ever  since  the  days  when  the 
first  seven  deacons  were  chosen.  If,  when 
we  say  "  Thy  Kingdom  come,"  we  mean 
only  "Let  thy  church  possess  an  organized 
form,"  we  are  praying  an  utterly  super- 
fluous prayer.  For  there  are  few  of  us 
who  could  honestly  ask  that  the  church 
have  any  more  of  organized  form  than  it 
has  to-day.  One  great  trouble  with  it  is, 
that  it  has  so  much  more  machinery  than 
power. 

To  suppose,  then,  that  the  petition  only 
asks  for  the  return  of  Jesus  Christ  in  a 
bodily  form  to  earth,  or  for  the  organiza- 
tion of  his  church,  is  to  give  it  a  meaning 
altogether  inadequate.  It  must  have  that 
larger  and  more  sj)iritual  meaning  which 
we  have  already  found  in  it. 


THE  ETERNAL  KINGDOM.  67 

"  But  why  then,"  the  questioner  per- 
sists, "  should  we  say  '  Thy  Kingdom 
come  ?  '  "  If  God's  Kingdom  is  the  sum  of 
all  beneficent  forces,  of  all  holy  influences, 
of  all  truth  and  all  love  and  all  righteous- 
ness, why  should  we  pray  that  it  may  come  ? 
It  is  here  already.  The  world  has  never 
been  wholly  destitute  of  righteousness. 
God  has  never  been  without  a  witness  on 
the  earth.  Purity,  truth,  and  love  have  al- 
ways had  a  place  on  this  planet.  If  they 
belong  to  the  foundations  of  God's  King- 
dom, then  God's  Kingdom  has  always  been 
here  since  the  morning-stars  first  sang  to- 
gether and  all  the  sons  of  God  sliouted  for 
joy.  Why  then  do  we  pray  "  Thy  King- 
dom come?  " 

Why  do  we  wish  or  ask  in  these  days 
of  March  that  summer  may  come?  That 
would  surely  be  a  proper  wish  and  might 
be  a  fitting  prayer.  Yet  all  the  elemefits 
of  the  summer  are  here  to-day.  The  earth, 
from  whose  fruitful  breast  the  summer 
springs,  lies  waiting  here ;  in   her  veins  a 


68  THE  LORD'S  PRATER. 

myriad  lives  are  throbbing ;  the  mighty- 
prince  of  light  whose  kiss  is  to  waken  all 
this  life  is  shining  down  on  us  every  day ; 
air  and  light  and  moisture  and  warmth,  all 
the  forces  that  make  the  summer,  are  here ; 
every  day  the  sun  is  wheeling  his  chariot 
a  little  higher  into  the  sky  ;  every  day  the 
empire  of  the  light  enlarges,  and  the  realm 
of  night  is  narroA^ed ;  yet,  though  the  ele- 
ments and  forces  out  of  which  the  summer 
comes  are  here,  we  might  wish  to  have 
them  here  in  greater  fullness  and  in  greater 
power. 

If  we  should  make  our  illustration  more 
specific  it  would  not  be  any  less  pertinent. 
Take  the  sunlight  itself,  the  great  source  of 
physical  life  upon  this  planet.  It  is  here, 
it  has  been  here,  who  knows  how  many 
ages?  The  tribes  of  earth  have  been  rejoic- 
ing in  its  beauty  and  nourishing  them- 
selves upon  its  vital  heat  since  the  mists  of 
the  world's  early  morning  first  broke  above 
its  watery  wastes ;  yet  we  do  not  cease  to 
desire  that   the  sunlight  may  continue   to 


THE  ETERNAL  KINGDOM.  69 

come.  We  have  it,  but  we  still  have  need 
of  it ;  there  will  never  be  a  season  when 
we  can  dispense  with  its  life-giving  influ- 
ence. 

Now  the  analogy  between  these  two  re- 
lations —  that  of  the  kingdom  of  life  on 
earth  to  the  sun,  and  that  of  the  Kingdom 
of  righteousness  on  earth  to  God  —  is  very- 
close.  And  if  it  is  lawful  and  rational  to 
pray  to  the  Father  in  heaven  that  he  will 
continue  to  send  his  sun  upon  the  evil  and 
the  good,  then  it  is  lawful  and  rational  to 
pray  "  Thy  Kingdom  come !  "  If  the  first 
prayer  does  not  necessarily  deny  that  the 
kingdoms  of  life  are  already  established  on 
the  earth,  the  other  does  not  necessarily 
deny  that  the  spiritual  Kingdom  of  God  is 
already  established  on  the  earth. 

The  petition  asks,  then,  not  that  right- 
eousness and  peace  and  joy  in  the  Holy 
Ghost  may  begin  on  the  earth,  for  they  be- 
gun to  be  long  ago  ;  but  that  they  may  con- 
tinue, and  that  they  may  increase.  Prob- 
ably it  is  the  increase  of  this  Kingdom  that 


70  THE  LORD'S  PRATER. 

is  more  specifically  intended.  It  is  a  fuller, 
a  broader,  a  more  glorious  manifestation  of 
these  great  principles  and  forces.  It  is  a 
prayer  that  the  lives  which  are  not  now 
under  their  sway  may  be  brought  into  sub- 
jection to  them ;  that  the  institutions  that 
now  are  ruled  by  selfishness  and  strife  may 
be  pervaded  by  them ;  that  the  homes  in 
which  vice  and  greed  and  worldliness  now 
reign  may  be  cleansed  and  hallowed  by  the 
spirit  of  purity  and  love  ;  that  the  societies 
in  which  frivolity  and  vanity  now  rule 
may  be  ruled  by  soberness  and  modesty 
and  quietness ;  that  many  lands  which  are 
now  habitations  of  cruelty  may  hear  and 
obey  the  gospel  of  good-will. 

It  is  not  a  prayer  that  the  leaven  may  be 
brought  and  placed  in  the  measures  of  meal, 
but  that  its  subtle,  transforming  influence 
may  extend  until  it  shall  pervade  the  whole 
lump.  It  is  not  a  prayer  that  the  mustard 
seed  may  be  planted,  but  that  its  growth 
may  be  hastened  by  the  gentle  dews  of 
God's  grace  and  the  sunlight  of  his  truth 


THE  ETERNAL  KINGDOM.  71 

until  it  shall  become  a  great  tree  whose 
branches  shall  be  vocal  with  the  songs  of 
Paradise,  and  in  whose  shade  all  the  weary 
of  the  world  may  rest. 

This  is,  then,  the  most  comprehensive 
petition  of  the  Lord's  prayer.  Indeed  it 
is  the  most  comprehensive  petition  that 
it  is  possible  for  man  to  ntter ;  there  is 
hardly  anything  that  we  ask  for  that  is  not 
summed  up  in  this  prayer.  It  is  a  prayer 
that  the  whole  world  may  grow  better  and 
brighter  ;  that  all  the  people  in  the  world 
may  grow  gentler  and  stronger  and  truer 
and  kinder  and  happier  year  by  year.  And 
it  is  a  recognition  of  the  fact  that  this  can 
come  to  pass  only  as  the  world  is  filled 
with  the  knowledge  of  God  and  ruled  by 
his  law ;  only  as  the  people  in  the  world 
come  to  know  him  better  and  to  obey  him 
more  perfectly. 

It  is  a  prayer  that  has  been  answered 
too,  how  many  times,  and  how  abundantly  I 
People  sometimes  question  whether  prayer 


72  THE  LORD'S  PRATER. 

is  ever  answered ;  but  here  is  a  prayer  that 
Christians  have  been  offering  now  for  eight- 
een hundred  years,  and  if  you  want  to 
know  whether  it  has  been  answered  read 
the  whole  of  history  since  Christ  ascended. 
"  Thy  Kingdom  come ! "  the  disciiDles 
prayed ;  and  presently  a  bloody  persecution 
fell  upon  them  in  Jerusalem,  and  drove 
them  forth  from  the  Holy  City  and  made 
them  homeless  wanderers.  That  was  a 
strange  way  of  answering  the  prayer.  But 
"  they  that  were  scattered  abroad  went 
everywhere  preaching  the  word."  Up  and 
down  the  rugged  roads  of  Palestine  they 
went  proclaiming  the  glad  tidings  of  great 
joy.  It  was  not  long  before  the  messen- 
gers found  their  way  over  the  heights  of 
Mount  Taurus,  and  here  and  there  a  centre 
of  light  was  kindled  in  the  dark  provinces 
of  Asia  Minor;  then  the  voice  came  to  Paul 
summoning  him  to  Macedonia,  and  Europe 
was  invaded  by  the  intrepid  apostle,  who 
planted  the  standard  of  the  Gospel  on  the 
classic  field  of  Philippi  and  on  the  heights 


THE  ETERNAL  KINGDOM.  73 

of  the  Areopagus.  From  these  small  be- 
ginnings the  leaven  of  Christianity  has 
spread,  until  now  nearly  a  third  part  of  the 
human  race  acknowledge  Jesus  Christ  as 
Lord. 

This  is  simply  putting  into  three  sen- 
tences the  story  of  the  outward  progress 
in  the  world  of  that  specialized  and  organ- 
ized manifestation  of  God's  truth  which  we 
call  the  Christian  religion.  And  while  we 
freely  admit  that  these  peoples  that  are 
now  called  Christian  are  far  from  compre- 
hending Christianity  in  its  highest  excel- 
lence a,nd  beauty,  we  may  safely  say  that 
there  is  not  one  among  them  to  which 
Christianity  has  not  proved  a  blessing  ;  not 
one  whose  darkness  it  has  not  enlightened, 
whose  life  it  has  not  lifted  up  ;  not  one  in 
which  there  is  not  more  of  righteousness 
and  peace  and  heavenly  hope  and  joy  than 
there  would  have  been  if  the  people  had 
not  heard  of  the  coming  of  the  Son  of  man. 

But  the  progress  of  God's  Kingdom  in 
the  world  has  not  been  confined  to  Chris- 


74  THE  LORD'S  PRAYER. 

tian  lands,  nor  even  to  the  Christian  era. 
It  is  a  prayer  that  devout  men  have  always 
been  offering  and  that  God  has  always  been 
answering.  When  Gautama  Siddhartha, 
in  the  Indian  city  of  Kapilavastu,  four  or 
five  hundred  years  before  the  coming  of  our 
Lord,  learned  and  taught  the  great  renun- 
ciation, the  Kingdom  of  God  drew  near  to 
all  those  Eastern  lands.  For  tliougb  the 
doctrines  of  Buddhism  are  but  a  partial  rev- 
elation of  God's  truth  and  love,  and  though 
the  rays  of  light  that  were  mingled  with  its 
darkness  have  been  greatly  blurred  by  the 
perversions  and  corruptions  of  later  days, 
yet  there  was  truth  in  it,  and  the  truth  in 
it  was  God's  truth  ;  and  there  was  love  in 
it,  and  it  was  God's  love  shed  abroad  in  the 
heart  of  Gautama  ;  and  it  lifted  millions  of 
people  up  to  a  higher  and  purer  life,  and 
there  was  more  of  righteousness  and  more 
of  peace  and  more  of  holy  joy  in  their 
hearts  and  in  their  homes  because  of  it ; 
and  therefore  we  know  that  it  was  not 
wholly  the  kingdom  of   the  evil   one,  but 


TEE  ETERNAL  KINGDOM.  75 

the  Kingdom  of  God  that  Gautama  Sid- 
dhartha,  in  some  blind  and  imperfect  way, 
was  building,  God  had  some  better  thing 
for  us  than  he  had  for  either  Jews  or  Bud- 
dhists ;  but  he  had  some  good  thing  for 
them  too ;  and  the  light  that  they  saw, 
though  it  shone  through  many  mists  of  su- 
perstition, was  a  beam  from  the  Eternal 
Sun  of  righteousness.  And  so  in  other 
lands,  Christian  and  Pagan,  God  has  been 
preparing  the  ways  by  which  his  Kingdom 
may  come  into  the  world,  by  which  it  may 
enter  and  take  possession  of  the  lives  of 
men  and  work  from  within  outward  in 
their  languages  and  their  laws  and  their 
arts  and  their  social  customs. 

"  Thy  Kingdom  come  !  "  good  Christians 
prayed.  And  he  who  hears  the  cry  of  his  1 
children  came  down  to  earth  and  stretched 
forth  his  hand  to  woman,  so  long  the  slave 
of  man's  power,  and  the  drudge  of  his  in- 
dolence, and  the  victim  of  his  passions,  and 
lifted  her  up,  and  clothed  her  motherhood 
with  dignity,  and  her  womanhood  with  di- 


76  THE  LORD'S  PRATER. 

vinity,  and  gave  us  by  her  hand  the  bless- 
ing of  home,  the  best  of  all  earth's  precious 
things. 

"  Thy  Kingdom  come ! "  the  strong  of 
faith  were  crying ;  and  a  Presence  unseen 
by  men  stood  among  the  prisoners  in  the 
dungeons  that  were  festering  dens  of  dis- 
ease and  vileness,  and  laid  its  gentle  hand 
upon  these  hapless  children  of  the  evil,  and 
lifted  the  weight  of  hate  and  scorn  that 
made  their  lot  so  desperate,  and  sought  to 
lead  them  forth  to  ways  of  purity. 

"  Thy  Kingdom  come  !  "  God's  children 
cried ;  and  the  victims  of  insanity  saw  a 
beam  of  hope  through  the  mental  darkness 
in  which  they  were  walking,  and  found 
themselves  no  longer  chained  and  scourged 
like  criminals,  but  gently  led  and  kindly 
treated. 

"  Thy  Kingdom  come  !  "  was  the  voice 
of  millions  who  groaned  in  slavery,  and  of 
millions  more  who  remembered  their  breth- 
ren in  bonds  as  bound  with  them  ;  and  one 
by  one  the  fetters  have  snapped  asunder,  — 


THE  ETERNAL  KINGDOM.  77 

the  strong  shackles  of  the  Roman  law,  the 
wounding  cords  of  feudal  villenage,  the  de- 
grading toils  of  British  slavery,  the  pre- 
scriptive manacles  of  Russian  serfdom, — 
until  even  in  our  own  land,  and  in  our  ovn 
day,— 

*'  Our  eyes  hare  seen  the  glory  of  the  coming  of  the  Lord," 

as  he  comes  proclaiming  liberty  through- 
out the  land  to  all  the  inhabitants  thereof. 

"  Thy  Kingdom  come !  "  the  children  of 
the  light  were  pleading  ;  and  the  hierarch- 
ies that  sought  to  confine  the  thought  of 
men  were  baffled  and  paralyzed,  and  the 
Bible  was  unchained,  and  the  ways  that 
lead  to  the  mercy-seat  were  opened  to  the 
feet  of  all  penitent  believers. 

Thus  it  is  by  these  mighty  changes  which 
have  liberated  and  elevated  and  enlight- 
ened the  children  of  men  that  God's  King- 
dom has  been  coming  through  all  the  ages, 
with  increasing  glory  and  enlarging  power. 
Sometimes  we  hear  the  voice  of  his  herald 
crying,    "  Who   is   this   that  cometh  from 


78  THE  LORD'S  PRATER. 

Edom,  with  dyed  garments  from  Bozrab, 
glorious  in  his  apparel,  traveling  in  the 
greatness  of  his  strength?  He  who  hath 
trodden  down  the  people  in  his  wrath  and 
trampled  upon  them  in  his  fury."  Some- 
times the  voice  cries,  "How  beautiful  upon 
the  mountains  are  the  feet  of  him  that 
bringeth  salvation,  that  publisheth  peace  !  " 
But  whether  he  come  in  his  might  with 
confused  noise  and  garments  rolled  in  blood, 
or  whether  he  come  in  his  gentleness,  steal- 
ing in  by  all  sweet  influences  to  men's 
hearts,  and  kindling  in  them  better  wishes 
and  kindlier  feelings,  —  he  is  always  com- 
ing ;  and  the  prayer  that  his  children  night 
and  day  are  lifting  to  his  throne  is  an- 
swered speedily,  —  yea  with  the  light  of 
every  sunrising  and  the  smile  of  every 
watching  star. 

And  now,  we  come  to  ask  whether  there 
is  anything  we  can  do  toward  the  answer- 
ing of  this  prayer.  Truly  we  can  do  much 
and  in  many  ways.    "  Though  the  greatest,' 


THE  ETERNAL  KINGDOM.  79 

says  Mr.  Ruskiu,  "  it  is  that  everlasting 
Kingdom  which  the  poorest  of  us  can  ad- 
vance. We  cannot  hasten  Christ's  coming. 
'  Of  the  day  and  the  hour  knoweth  none.' 
But  the  Kingdom  of  God  is  as  a  grain  of 
mustard  seed ;  we  can  sow  of  it :  it  is  as  a 
foam-globe  of  leaven  ;  we  can  mingle  it : 
and  its  glory  and  its  joy  are  that  even  the 
birds  of  the  air  can  lodge  in  the  branches 
of  it." 

Even  the  children  can  help  to  bring,  in 
many  places,  this  Kingdom  of  God  for  which 
they  daily  pray.  I  heard  a  mother  telling 
the  other  day  of  her  children  who  had  quar- 
reled sometimes,  as  many  children  do,  I  fear, 
but  who  had  both  been  made  so  thoroughly 
sorry  and  ashamed  on  account  of  one  of  their 
quarrels  that  they  were  careful  for  many 
days  after  that  not  to  say  a  bitter  word,  or 
to  do  a  hateful  deed.  So  peace  came  to  that 
home  through  the  prayer  and  the  watching 
of  these  two  Christian  children  ;  and  peace, 
you  know,  is  one  of  the  signs  of  the  Kingdom 
of  God  in  the  world.    And  I  hope  that  when 


80  THE  LORD'S  PRAYER, 

the  children  offer  this  prayer  they  will  re- 
member that  this  is  one  of  the  ways  in 
which  it  is  answered,  and  in  which  they 
may  help  in  answering  it. 

And  wherever  we  help  one  another  to  the 
living  of  better  lives,  —  to  be  more  truthful 
or  upright  or  honorable  or  kind,  to  be  more 
faithful  in  our  duties  to  God  or  to  men,  — 
there  we  are  helping  to  answer  our  prayer, 
and  to  hasten  the  coming  of  God's  Kingdom. 

You  offer  this  prayer  sometimes,  many  of 
you,  most  of  you,  I  trust.  Do  you  always 
stop  to  think  what  it  means  ?  For  it  has  a 
personal  bearing.  I  have  said  that  it  is  a 
very  comprehensive  petition,  and  so  it  is ; 
but  it  has  a  very  direct  application  to  the 
life  of  every  individual  who  utters  it.  It  is 
like  the  "  whosoever  "  of  the  Gospel ;  what 
makes  it  such  a  momentous  word  to  me  is 
the  fact  that  it  means  me. 

You  pray  that  the  Kingdom  of  God  may 
come  ?  Do  you  want  it  to  come  to  Massa- 
chusetts ?  Do  you  desire  that  it  should 
come  to  Springfield  ?     Do  you  wish  to  have 


THE  ETERNAL  KINGDOM.  81 

it  come  to  your  store,  your  office,  your  sliop^ 
your  study,  your  table,  your  toilet,  your 
closet,  your  heart  ? 

How  near  to  you  do  you  desire  that  the 
Kingdom  of  God  should  come  ? 
6 


IV. 

THE  BLESSED   WILL. 

Thy  will  be  done  on  earth  as  it  is  in  heaven. 

Matt.  vi.  10. 

This  petition  differs  from  the  one  which 
precedes  it  mainly  in  being  more  specific 
and  personal.  When  we  pray  "  Thy  King- 
dom come!"  our  thought  goes  more  natu- 
rally to  the  whole  grand  result  which  God 
is  working  out  in  the  world.  We  may  and 
must  think  of  the  relation  of  this  Kingdom 
to  our  own  lives ;  but  the  primary  sugges- 
tion is  that  of  the  universal  prevalence  of 
the  Kingdom  as  an  object  of  desire. 

When  we  say  "  Thy  will  be  done,"  the 
application  to  ourselves  is  more  distinctly 
made.  We  think  less  of  the  whole  than  of 
the  parts  which  compose  it ;  yet  we  know 
that  when  the  will  of  God  shall  be  done 
by  all  that  the  Kingdom  of  God  will  have 
fully  come. 


THE  BLESSED    WILL.  83 

This  petition  doubtless  conveys  to  many 
of  those  who  use  it  a  lesson  of  simple  sub- 
mission. They  suppose  that  it  is  the  prayer 
of  a  passive  rather  than  of  an  active  faith. 
Mr.  Ruskin  says  that  many  of  the  most 
earnest  Christians  always  speak  these  words 
"  as  if  their  Father's  will  were  always  to 
kill  their  babies,  or  do  something  unpleas- 
ant to  them." 

Undoubtedly  the  prayer  does  include  the 
thought  of  submission  to  the  will  of  God. 
Sometimes  the  will  of  God  conflicts  with 
our  plans,  runs  counter  to  our  wishes,  dis- 
turbs our  repose,  and  then  it  is  necessary 
that  we  should  submit.  In  such  times  it  is 
good  for  us  to  be  able  to  say  from  the  heart, 
"  Thy  will  be  done  ; "  and  therefore  it  is 
well  for  us  to  settle  it  in  our  thoughts  be- 
forehand that  his  will  is  a  good  will,  and 
ought  to  be  done  ;  and  that  though  for  the 
present  it  may  seem  grievous,  it  is  sure  to 
bring  forth  the  peaceable  fruits  of  righteous- 
ness in  all  who  trust  Him,  and  wait  upon  ~ 
his  word. 


84  THE  LORD'S  PRATER. 

There  is  a  mistake  just  here,  however, 
against  which  we  must  be  watching.  It  is 
possible  to  be  too  submissive.  Submissive- 
ness  may  degenerate  into  supineness.  We 
ought  to  be  measurably  sure  that  the  ills 
that  threaten  us  are  coming  upon  us  by  the 
will  of  God  before  we  submit  to  them. 

A  man  is  sitting  upon  a  steep  hill-side  in 
the  spring-time  when  he  hears  a  noise,  and, 
looking  up,  perceives  a  huge  rock  that  has 
been  loosened  by  the  frost  rolling  down 
upon  him.  It  is  evident  that  the  rock  will 
pass  directly  over  the  place  where  he  is  sit- 
ting, and  though  there  is  time  for  him  to 
escape  he  sits  still,  saying,  "  It  seems  to  be 
the  will  of  the  Lord  that  I  should  perish 
here,  and  his  will  be  done."  But  this  is 
not  the  will  of  God  in  the  truest  sense  of 
the  word.  The  will  of  God  is  that  the  man 
shall  escape ;  the  noise  that  warns  him  is 
the  call  that  summons  him  to  escape ;  his 
sitting  still  is  not  trusting  God,  nor  submit- 
ting to  God,  but  tempting  God  most  wick- 
edly. 


THE  BLESSED    WILL.  85 

A  man  is  suffering  from  dyspepsia,  tlie 
result  of  his  own  imprudence  in  the  use  of 
food ;  or  from  nervous  headache,  the  re- 
sult of  an  intemperate  indulgence  in  to- 
bacco ;  and  though  he  does  not  mend  his 
habits,  we  hear  him  talk  in  the  midst  of  his 
sufferings  about  being  submissive  to  the 
trial  God  has  put  upon  him.  All  suffering, 
he  says,  comes  from  the  hand  of  God  ;  it  is 
his  will  that  I  should  suffer;  his  will  be 
done.  But  it  is  not  God's  will  that  this 
man  should  suffer ;  this  is  not  the  portion 
that  God  has  chosen  for  him ;  it  is  the  por- 
tion that  he  has  chosen  for  himself.  He  is 
altogether  too  submissive. 

The  income  of  a  family  is  cut  off  and 
they  are  left  in  distress.  They  make  some 
efforts  to  find  employment  and  livelihood, 
but  they  do  not  readily  obtain  what  they 
seek,  and  presently  they  settle  down  into 
what  seems  to  them  a  pious  resignation  to 
the  decrees  of  Providence,  but  what  their 
neighbors  think  is  utter  shiftlessness.  I 
have  known  a  number  of  families  that  were 


86  THE  LORD'S  PRAYER. 

quite  too  submissive  to  "what  they  called 
tlie  will  of  the  Lord.  More  grit  and  less 
resignation  would  have  kept  them  in  better 
circumstances. 

It  is  only  in  a  secondary  sense  that  suf- 
fering can  ever  be  said  to  be  the  will  of 
God.  His  will  is  expressed  in  his  laws ; 
obedience  to  his  laws  brings  health  and 
happiness  and  peace ;  disobedience  brings 
suffering.  His  will  is  that  men  should 
obey  his  laws ;  but  that  if  they  do  not  obey 
they  shall  suffer.  The  suffering  is  a  warn- 
ing against  disobedience,  and  a  dissuasive 
from  it. 

It  is  true  that  men  are  so  linked  together 
by  ties  of  hereditary  and  of  social  organiza- 
tion that  suffering  may  come  upon  me  as  a 
result  of  the  disobedience  of  my  ancestors 
or  of  my  neighbors.  Sometimes  by  dili- 
gence and  patience  I  can  reach  the  causes 
of  this  suffering  and  remove  them  ;  when  I 
can  that  is  my  duty ;  when  I  cannot,  then 
right  reason  and  filial  trust  call  on  me  to 
submit. 


TEE  BLESSED    WILL.  87 

Suppose  I  come  into  the  world  witli  a 
hereditary  tendency  to  consumption  or  par- 
alysis, the  result  of  the  disobedience  of 
some  of  my  ancestors  to  the  laws  of  health. 
Now  it  may  be  possible  for  me,  by  prudence 
and  temperance,  to  counterwork  these  ten- 
dencies and  to  preserve  and  confirm  my 
health.  There  ai^e  remedial  and  restorative 
forces  in  my  physical  system  that  may  re- 
pair the  damages  that  have  been  entailed 
upon  me,  if  these  damages  are  not  too  seri- 
ous. It  is  my  business  to  give  these  reme- 
dial forces  a  chance  to  do  their  proper  work. 
They  are  the  highest  and  most  perfect  ex- 
pression in  my  nature  of  the  will  of  God  ; 
and  it  is  this  part  of  the  will  of  God  that  I 
must  be  most  careful  to  have  done. 

But  it  is  possible  that  the  injuries  which 
I  have  inherited  are  so  serious  that  the  nat- 
ural remedial  forces  will  not  repair  them, 
no  matter  how  great  care  I  may  exercise ; 
when  this  is  so  I  must  submit.  Shall  I  say 
that  the  suffering  which  I  endure  as  the 
consequence  of  these  inherited  injuries,  by 


88  THE  LORD'S  PRAYER. 

wliich  my  days  are  burdened  and  my  life  is 
shortened,  comes  upon  me  by  the  will  of 
God  ?  Yes  ;  there  is  no  other  way  of  ex- 
plaining it.  It  is  in  the  nature  of  things 
that  disobedience  should  bring  suffering  not 
only  to  him  who  disobeys,  but  often  to  his 
children  and  his  children's  children  for 
many  generations  ;  and  the  nature  of  things, 
as  Mr.  Joseph  Cook  says,  is  "  the  total  out- 
come of  God's  free  choice."  The  universe 
is  so  made  that  sin  not  only  inflicts  but  en- 
tails suffering  ;  and  God  made  the  universe. 
The  suffering  that  is  inherited  is  not,  how- 
ever, penalty  ;  it  is  no  sign  that  God  is  dis- 
pleased with  me ;  it  may  be  a  means  of 
grace  to  me,  if  I  will  rightly  use  it.  And 
this  is  where  the  duty  of  submission  comes 
in :  the  patient  endurance  of  ills  that  can- 
not be  mended  is  a  part  of  the  divine  dis- 
cipline in  which  we  must  all  be  exercised. 
There  are  plenty  of  pains  and  infirmities 
and  troubles  that  we  are  not  to  blame  for, 
and  that  we  cannot  help  ;  we  may  not  al- 
ways understand  the  reasons  of  them  ;  but 


THE  BLESSED   WILL.  89 

we  do  know  that  the  God  under  whose  wise 
laws  they  are  visited  upon  us  is  infinite 
Love,  and  that  in  some  way,  if  we  rightly 
use  them,  they  will  work  together  for  good 
to  us ;  and  therefore,  in  the  midst  of  such 
suffering,  we  are  ready  to  say  to  him, 
"  Thy  will  be  done." 

There  is  room,  then,  in  the  Christian  ex- 
perience for  submission,  and  reason  enough 
why  we  should  often  put  this  passive  sense 
into  this  petition.  But  I  am  afraid  that 
we  often  provoke  our  Heavenly  Father  by 
substituting  submission  for  obedience ;  by 
lying  still  and  piously  taking  the  conse- 
quences of  disobedience,  instead  of  rising  up 
and  obeying ;  by  enduring  his  will  in  the 
shape  of  penalty,  instead  of  studying  and 
doing  his  will,  as  it  is  made  known  to  us  in 
the  laws  of  the  universe,  and  thus  avoiding 
the  penalty. 

A  city  is  suffering  from  some  epidemic  ; 
one  family  after  another  is  invaded  by  the 
destroyer,  and  the  mourners  go  about  the 
streets.     In  the  midst  of  the  sorrow,  many 


90  THE  LORD'S  PRAYER. 

devout  expressions  of  submission  to  the  will 
of  God  are  heard.  But  this  scourge  is  not, 
I  say,  in  the  deepest  and  truest  sense  of  the 
word,  the  will  of  God.  His  will  is  that 
people  shall  find  out  and  obey  the  laws  of 
health  ;  they  suffer  in  this  way,  only  be- 
cause they  fail  to  do  his  will.  The  epi- 
demic is  not  his  first  choice  for  this  people, 
but  his  second  choice ;  it  is  not  the  result 
of  an  arbitrary  decree ;  it  is  conditional 
upon  their  disobedience ;  the  epidemic  re- 
sults from  causes  for  which  men  are  respon- 
sible, and  which  men  are  bound  to  find  and 
remove.  And  over  every  such  suffering 
community,  where  the  black  shadow  of  the 
pestilence  darkens  the  homes  of  the  people, 
and  the  faces  of  men  are  pale  with  feai',  the 
infinite  Compassion  is  brooding,  and  the  in- 
finite Patience  is  crying,  "  I  have  no  pleas- 
ure in  the  death  of  him  that  dieth,  .... 
wherefore  turn  yourselves,  and  live  ye!  " 

They  who  do  the  will  of  the  Lord,  then, 
please  him  far  more  than  they  who  suffer 
his  will ;  and  the  principal  meaning  of  this 


THE  BLESSED    WILL.  91 

petition  is  that  God  will  help  us  in  doing 
his  will,  rather  than   that  he  will   give   us 
patience  in  enduring  the  sufferings  that  re- 
sult from    disobedience.      That   qualifying 
clause  of  the  petition  to  which  we  have  not 
yet  referred  makes  this  very  plain.     "  Thy 
will  be  done  on  earth  as  it  is  in  heaven." 
But  it  is  not  by  endurance  and  submission 
that  the  will  of  God  is  done  in  heaven.     It 
is  not  in  sorrow  and  bereavement  that  the 
angels  and  the   just  men  made  perfect  sit 
down  in  the  mansions  above,  saying,  "  Thy 
will,  O  God,  be  done  !  "     In  heaven  God's 
will   is  not  enforced   as   penalty  upon  his 
children ;    there  is  no  need   of  that ;   it  is 
done  by  his  children.     And  it  is  not  done 
by  them  as  a  servant  does  his  master's  will, 
but   in  a  free,  hearty,  loving,  intelligent, 
obedience.      The   voice   of  him   who   said 
"  Lo  I  come ;  in  the  volume  of  the  book  it 
is  written  of  me,  I  delight  to  do  thy  will, 
O    my    God:    yea  thy    law   is    within   my 
heart,"  is  the   voice   of   all   that   glorified 
company.     This   is   the  very  definition   of 


92  TEE  LORD'S  PRATER. 

heaven.  Heaven  is  that  place  where  all 
the  creatures  of  God  know  and  do  his  will ; 
therefore  there  is  and  can  be  for  them  no 
sorrow,  no  pain,  no  death.  Being  con- 
formed to  his  will  they  are  made  partakers 
of  his  nature,  and  thus  enter  into  peace  and 
blessedness  and  everlasting  life. 

Now,  we  are  taught  to  pray,  "  Tby  will 
be  done  as  in  heaven,  so  in  earth,"  —  as  by 
angels  and  the  glorified,  so  by  mortals. 
This  means  not  endurance,  but  intelligent 
and  joyful  obedience. 

I  am  sure,  my  brethren,  that  we  have  not 
given  sufficient  emphasis  in  our  religious 
life  to  this  meaning  of  the  petition.  Our 
religion  has  been  occupied  far  more  in  seek- 
ing to  save  us  from  the  consequences  of 
disobedience,  than  in  seeking  to  understand 
and  obey  the  will  of  God.  Doubtless  we 
have  all  disobeyed  God's  will,  and  are  not 
only  suffering  the  present  consequences  of 
disobedience,  but  are  also  exposed  to  other 
and  more  serious  consequences  in  the  fut- 
ure:  doubtless   it  is  necessary  for   us   to 


THE  BLESSED    WILL.  93 

study  how  we  may  escape  from  these  ;  but 
after  all  it  is  no  more  important  that  we 
should  be  delivered  from  the  penalties  of 
past  disobedience  than  that  we  should  study 
to  be  obedient  in  the  present.  A  child 
who  was  always  trying  to  evade  punish- 
ment for  past  offenses,  or  beseeching  you 
to  forgive  them,  and  who  yet  kept  right 
on  recklessly  disregarding  your  commands, 
would  seem  to  you  neither  filial  nor  dutiful. 
Penitence  and  reconciliation  on  account  of 
past  misdeeds  are  well,  as  far  as  they  go, 
but  they  must  not  take  the  place  of  present 
obedience. 

Let  us  try  to  remember,  then,  that  our 
religion  ought  to  show  us  not  only  how  we 
may  be  forgiven  for  not  having  done  God's 
■will  in  the  past,  but  how  we  may  do  it  in 
the  time  to  come.  Let  us  remember  that 
God  is  better  pleased  with  us  when  we  are 
doing  his  will  than  when  we  are  suffering 
the  consequences  of  disobedience,  or  when 
we  are  suing  to  be  forgiven. 


94  THE  LORD'S  PRATER. 

To  do  God's  will  we  must  know  what  it 
is.     How  shall  we  find  it  out  ? 

The  first  and  most  obvious  answer  to  this 
question  is  that  his  will  has  been  revealed, 
and  that  we  find  it  in  his  Word.  And  if 
we  remember  that  the  Bible  is  the  history 
of  the  moral  progress  of  the  Jewish  nation 
out  of  barbarism  into  civilization  under  the 
Divine  guidance,  and  that  many  of  the  com- 
mands given  were  accommodated  to  the  low 
moral  condition  of  the  people,  and  contain, 
therefore,  an  imperfect  morality ;  if  we  re- 
member that  it  is  in  the  teachings  of  Christ, 
who  fulfilled  the  law  in  righteousness,  that 
the  perfect  revelation  of  the  will  of  God  is 
to  be  found,  then  that  answer  may  stand. 
The  Bible  does  make  known  to  us  the  will 
of  God,  only  let  us  be  sure  that  we  know 
how  and  where  to  look  for  it.  Some  of  the 
commands  of  the  Bible  are  local  and  tem- 
porary ;  even  some  of  the  principles  incor- 
porated into  the  ancient  legislation  are  ob- 
solete. They  belonged  to  the  scaffolding 
with  which  God  was  building  his  temple, 


THE  BLESSED    WILL.  95 

and  not  to  the  temple  itself.  But  there 
are  also  many  commands  of  the  Bible  that 
are  of  universal  obligation.  The  words  of 
Christ,  as  I  have  said,  are  the  perfect  ut- 
terance of  God's  will.  And  those  holy 
men  who  were  taught  by  Christ  himself, 
and  who  were  inspired  of  God  to  teach  and 
preach  his  Gospel,  have  given  us  in  their 
Epistles,  and  especially  in  the  last  chapters 
of  them,  in  which  they  teach  of  practical 
religion,  a  clear  expression  of  God's  will, 
In  the  thirteentli  chapter  of  First  Corinth- 
ians, for  example,  you  will  find  a  revelation 
of  God's  will  as  distinct  and  perfect  as  it  is 
possible  to  put  into  language.  The  same 
thing  is  true  of  the  twelfth  chapter  of  the 
Epistle  to  the  Romans,  and  the  third  chap- 
ter of  the  Epistle  to  the  Colossians,  and  the 
sixth  chapter  of  the  Epistle  to  the  Gala- 
tians,  and  tlie  whole  of  the  Epistle  of  James, 
and  many  such  passages.  I  am  not  saying 
that  the  whole  Bible  is  not  profitable  for 
doctrine,  for  reproof,  and  for  instruction  in 
righteousness ;  I  am  only  pointing  out  those 


96  THE  LORD'S  PRATER. 

portions  of  it  in  which  that  part  of  the  will 
of  God  which  we  ought  to  do  is  most  clearly- 
set  forth. 

Our  Lord  himself  has  condensed  the 
whole  of  God's  law  into  two  short  com- 
mandments :  — 

"  Thou  shalt  love  the  Lord  thy  God  with 
all  thy  heart,  and  with  all  thy  soul,  and 
with  all  thy  mind,"  and,  — 

"  Thou  shalt  love  thy  neighbor  as  thy- 
self." 

He  who  perfectly  obeys  these  two  com- 
mands perfectly  does  God's  will. 

So  then  we  find  in  this  Holy  Book  such 
a  declaration  to  us  of  the  will  of  God  as 
may  serve  to  guide  our  feet  into  the  ways 
of  obedience.  If  we  study  the  Word  with 
a  prayerful  and  teachable  miud,  we  shall 
know  more  of  his  will  than  we  shall  ever 
find  time  and  strength  to  do. 

"  But  is  there  not  danger  that  men 
will  misunderstand  these  teachings  of  the 
Bible?"  some  one  asks.  "May  they  not 
often  interpret  these  words  to  mean  what 


THE  BLESSED    WILL.  97 

they  do  not  mean  ?  Is  it  not  trtie  that  dif- 
ferent persons  and  different  sects  give  to 
these  words  various  and  even  contradictory- 
meanings?"  Yes;  to  a  certain  extent  that 
is  true.  Still  I  do  not  think  there  has  been 
so  much  dispute  concerning  the  will  of  God, 
as  revealed  in  the  Scripture,  as  concerning 
the  methods  of  God's  working.  It  is  the 
philosophy  of  religion,  or  the  forms  of  re- 
ligion, that  men  quarrel  about  more  than 
the  principles  and  rules  of  conduct.  It  is 
not  concerning  what  God  requires  of  them 
that  they  disagree,  so  much  as  it  is  con- 
cerning what  his  thoughts  and  counsels  and 
purposes  are  for  the  whole  universe.  And 
the  fact  is  that  if  these  wrangling  sectaries 
would  make  it  their  main  business  for  a 
little  while  just  to  find  out  that  part  of  the 
will  of  the  Lord  which  they  can  surely  know 
and  which  they  ought  to  be  doing,  —  and 
then  would  do  it,  —  all  the  disputing  and 
quarreling  would  speedily  come  to  an  end. 

It  is  not,  then,  so  difficult  as  some  may 
think  to  find  to  find  out,  by  reading  the 

7 


98  THE  LORD'S  PRAYER. 

Word  of  God,  what  God's  will  is.  No  one 
will  go  far  astray  who  applies  his  o^vii  com- 
mon sense  to  the  task  of  finding  in  the 
words  of  Christ  and  of  his  apostles  what 
the  Lord  would  have  him  to  do.  But  he 
may  have  a  better  guide  than  his  own  com- 
mon sense.  It  is  not  necessary  that  he 
should  lean  wholly  to  his  own  understand- 
ing. That  may  mislead  him.  He  may 
have  the  enlightenment  of  the  Holy  Ghost 
as  he  studies  the  Holy  Word.  A  sancti- 
fied common  sense  is  a  safer  interpreter  of 
'the  Word  of  God  than  learning  and  genius 
unsanctified. 

Following  this  guide,  therefore,  we  may 
find  in  the  Bible  a  bright  revelation  of  the 
will  of  God.  And  if,  in  all  our  study  of 
the  Bible,  we  sought  this  mainly  —  to  find 
things  to  do  —  to  get  hints  as  to  the  kind  of 
work  God  has  for  us,  in  the  cleansing  of 
our  lives,  and  in  the  serving  of  him  and 
of  our  neighbors  in  the  world  ;  if  we  went 
to  it  as  to  an  order-book  in  which  we  ex- 
pected to  find  some   definite   direction  for 


THE  BLESSED    WILL.  99 

the  doing  of  God's  will  to-day,  — I  am  sure 
that  our  study  of  the  Bible  would  do  us 
much  more  good  than  it  now  does.  We 
are  too  apt  to  read  the  Bible  and  study  the 
Bible  as  a  mere  perfunctory  service.  It  is 
a  thing  to  be  gone  through  with,  there  is 
so  much  Bible  reading  or  Bible  study  to  be 
done ;  it  is  a  duty,  and  when  it  is  done  it 
is  done,  like  any  other  duty.  Or  else  we 
fall  into  the  habit  of  thinking  that  there  is 
a  certain  charm  about  it ;  that  the  study  of 
the  Bible  in  some  mysterious  way  has  a 
kind  of  alterative  effect  upon  the  charac- 
ter; so  that  to  spend  a  certain  time  every 
week  reading  it  will  prove  to  be  a  means 
of  grace.  If  we  could  get  rid  of  all  such 
formal  and  superstitious  notions,  and  just 
remember  that  our  main  business  with  the 
Bible  is  to  find  out  from  it  what  God  wants 
us  to  do,  the  book  would  speedily  come  to 
have  new  meaning  and  value. 

I  do  not  think  that  I  have  exaggerated 
the  importance  of  the  Bible  as  a  chart  for 
the  guidance  of  men   in   doing  God's  will. 


100  THE  LORD'S  PRAYER. 

Mr.  Matthew  Arnold  is  not  much  of  a  be- 
liever, but  he  says  that  conduct  is  three 
fourths  of  life,  and  that  the  Bible,  far 
above  all  other  books,  is  the  book  of  con- 
duct. We  shall  be  safe,  I  am  sure,  in 
adopting  his  maxim,  so  that  while  we  pray 
"  Thy  will  be  done,"  we  may  search  the 
Scriptui-es  to  find  each  day  how  to  help  in 
answering  our  prayer  —  what  part  of  God's 
will  we  ought  each  day  to  be  doing. 

But  while  the  principles  on  which  we 
ought  to  act  are  clearly  set  down  in  the 
teachings  of  Christ  and  his  apostles,  ancj 
while  many  applications  of  these  principles 
are  suggested  also  in  the  Word  of  God,  our 
study  of  nature  and  of  providence  ought 
to  throw  much  light  upon  the  ways  in 
which  these  principles  are  to  be  worked 
out.  For  God's  will  is  revealed  not  only 
in  the  Bible,  but  also  in  nature  and  in 
providence.  We  learn  the  will  of  God  as 
we  learn  the  will  of  a  man,  not  only  by 
attending  to  what  he  has  said,  but  by  ob- 


THE  BLESSED    WILL.  101 

serving  what  he  is  doing.  His  works  quite 
as  distinctly  as  his  words  indicate  his  will. 

So  when  I  pluck  in  the  meadow  a  violet 
or  a  crow-foot  bloom,  and  look  it  in  the 
face  and  see  how  deftly  its  petals  are  carved 
and  how  daintily  they  are  painted,  then  I 
learn  a  little  of  what  God's  will  is.  Such 
a  thing  of  beauty  as  this  is  an  expression 
of  his  thought  and  of  his  love.  He  no 
more  wills  that  I  should  be  holy  than  that 
this  flower  should  be  beautiful.  And  al- 
though the  flowers  are  not  all  perfect ;  al- 
though in  an  unkindly  environment  some 
of  them  have  been  maimed  and  scarred;  yet 
of  this  we  are  always  sure,  that  the  flower 
which  is  most  beautiful  comes  nearest  to 
being  the  flower  that  God  meant  to  make 
and  did  make  in  the  beginning. 

So  when  we  see  a  human  being  of  good 
stature  and  fair  proportions,  with  a  clear 
eye  and  a  ruddy  skin,  and  the  wholesome 
beauty  that  springs  from  perfect  health, 
we  are  able  to  say  with  equal  assurance 
that  God's  will  is   revealed   in   the  body 


102  THE  LORD'S  PRAYER. 

wMcli  that  soul  inhabits,  however  poorly 
it  may  be  done  by  the  inhabitant.  And 
though  there  are  many  decrepit  and  dis- 
eased bodies  in  which  human  beings  make 
their  liomes,  yet  we  are  sure  that  those 
bodies  which  are  soundest  and  most  sym- 
metrical and  most  beautiful  are  the  near- 
est like  what  God  means  all  the  bodies  of 
men  to  be. 

In  like  manner  when  we  meet  with  a 
human  life  that  is  upright  and  modest  and 
pure  and  beneficent,  based  on  firm  princi- 
ples of  justice  and  honor,  working  quietly 
but  energetically  for  the  building  up  of 
righteousness,  —  we  know  that  God's  will 
is  revealed  in  such  a  life  as  this  more  per- 
fectly than  any  words  can  tell  it,  more 
clearly  than  any  flower  can  show  it,  more 
fully  than  the  shapeliest  form  and  the 
comeliest  face  can  reveal  it. 

And  when  we  go  into  a  home  in  which 
love  is  the  law,  in  which  each  member  of 
the  household  seeks  to  live  worthily,  and  in 
which  all  conspire  together  to  seek  one  an- 


THE  BLESSED    WILL.  103 

other's  welfare  and  happiness,  so  that  the 
law  of  the  home  seems  to  be,  Each  for  all 
and  all  for  each,  —  then  we  are  sure  that 
God's  will  is  made  known  to  us  in  the  life 
of  this  household ;  that  something  like  this 
is  what  he  would  have  every  home  to  be. 

And  if  we  should  find  ourselves  in  a 
community  where  peace  and  order  and 
temperance  and  thrift  and  industry  and 
contentment  abounded  ;  where  there  was 
no  squalid  poverty,  and  no  filth-breeding 
pestilence,  and  no  enormous  fortunes,  and 
no  profligate  expenditures  of  wealth,  and 
no  extortionate  capitalists  who  kept  them- 
selves wholly  aloof  from  the  work-people 
by  whose  labor  they  were  enriched,  and 
cared  not,  so  long  as  their  dividends  were 
undiminished,  how  fast  the  laborers  were 
pauperized  and  brutalized ;  where  there 
were  no  eye-servants,  that  worked  only 
when  they  were  watched,  and  no  discon- 
tented and  surly  and  suspicious  employees  ; 
where  the  law  of  good-will  had  prevailed 
over  the  law  of  supply  and  demand,  mak- 


104  THE  LORD'S  PRAYER. 

ing  peace  where  once  was  strife,  and  spread- 
ing plenty  where  once  was  poverty,  —  if 
we  ever  should  find  such  a  community  as 
that  we  should  know  of  a  surety  that  God's 
will  had  found  expression  in  its  corporate 
life ;  we  should  say  with  confidence  that 
every  community  on  earth  would  be  like 
this  community  when  his  will  should  be 
done  on  earth  as  it  is  done  in  heaven. 

In  short,  my  friends,  we  know  that  God 
wills  that  beauty  and  health  and  sym- 
metry and  vigor  and  virtue  and  courage 
and  charity  and  fidelity  and  tenderness  and 
love  and  joy  and  peace  and  good-will  shall 
increase  and  abound  everywhere  on  the 
earth  ;  and  that  whenever  we  plant  a  seed 
in  the  secret  place  that  will  bring  forth  such 
fruit  as  this,  or  whenever  we  say  a  word  or 
do  a  deed  that  will  lead  to  such  result  as 
this,  we  are  helping  to  answer  this  prayer. 
Answered  it  will  be  in  God's  own  time,  in 
God's  own  way.  His  will  shall  be  done 
everywhere  upon  the  earth  as  it  is  done  in 
heaven.     He  never  taught  his  children  to 


THE  BLESSED    WILL.  105 

offer  a  prayer  that  he  did  not  mean  to  an- 
swer. It  only  remains  for  us  to  put  our- 
selves in  line  with  the  divine  purposes,  re- 
membering that  this  prayer  is  not  the  voice 
of  supineness  and  quietism,  but  that  the 
words  are  fit  to  hold  all  the  energies  of  our 
greatest  hopes  and  our  strongest  volitions. 
Let  us  learn  here  on  earth,  not  only  to  en- 
dure God's  will,  -when  it  thwarts  our  plans 
and  takes  away  our  pleasures,  but  to  do  his 
will  with  swift  and  glad  obedience,  as  it  is 
done  by  strong  angels  and  happy  saints  in 
heaven. 


V. 

THE   CONVENIENT  EOOD. 
Give  us  this  day  our  daily  bread.  —  Matt.  vi.  11. 

We  come  now  to  the  first  petition  of  the 
Lord's  Prayer  that  expresses  a  personal 
want  of  the  petitioner.  By  all  that  has 
gone  before  this  we  have  been  taken  out  of 
and  away  from  ourselves ;  we  have  lifted 
up  to  God  the  voice  of  reverent  and  filial 
love,  acknowledging  him  as  our  Father  ;  we 
have  prayed  that  his  Name  may  be  honored 
and  sanctified  in  the  thoughts  of  men  ;  that 
his  Kingdom  of  righteousness  and  peace  and 
joy  in  the  Holy  Ghost  may  be  established 
and  promoted  ;  and  that  his  Holy  Will  may 
be  done  in  earth  by  men  as  it  is  done  by 
saints  and  angels  in  heaven.  We  have  not 
thought  as  yet  of  our  own  necessities.  If 
we  have  wants  we  have  not  considered 
them,  and  half  of  the  prayer  is  said  already. 


THE   CONVENIENT  FOOD.  107 

Our  minds  have  been  led  away  over  the 
universe  of  God ;  we  have  been  made  to 
take  in  the  great  purposes  of  the  divine 
love,  and  the  great  attributes  of  the  divine 
character;  and  now  with  this  preparation 
we  come  to  think  of  our  own  personal 
needs.  Plainly,  we  shall  not  be  quite  so 
selfish,  quite  so  insistent,  quite  so  queru- 
lous in  our  petitioning  as  we  should  have 
been  if  we  had.  not  been  lifted  up  and  led 
forth  along  these  higher  paths. 

"  Give  us  this  day  our  daily  bread." 
Shall  we  use  these  words  literally,  or  shall 
we  give  them  a  spiritual  signification  ?  Is 
it  food  for  our  bodies  or  for  our  souls,  or 
both,  that  we  ask  for  in  these  words  ?  I 
incline  to  the  opinion  held  by  the  majority 
of  expositors  that  the  petition  is  to  be  taken 
in  the  plainest  sense  ;  that  it  asks  for  a  sup- 
ply of  food  for  our  bodies.  This  is  indeed 
one  of  the  primary  necessities.  Light  and 
air  God  gives  us  freely  ;  after  these  indis- 
pensables  food  comes  next  in  order  of  im- 


108  TEE  LORD'S  PRAYER. 

portance ;  and  this  is  not,  ordinarily,  made 
ready  to  our  hand  in  nature.  Some  labor 
is  necessary  to  procure  it,  some  care  to  hus- 
band it ;  it  becomes  an  object  of  thought 
and  desire  as  light  and  air  do  not ;  and 
therefore  it  is  something  to  be  prayed  for. 
Our  Lord  teaches  us  to  pray  for  it ;  and 
in  this  petition  we  have  a  clear  warrant  for 
praying  for  temporal  mercies.  Surely  if  it 
is  lawful  to  pray  for  a  thing  as  common  as 
daily  bread,  it  is  lawful  to  pray  for  any- 
thing we  need.  We  may  not  see  how  God 
can  give  us  these  gifts  we  ask  for  without 
working  a  miracle,  but  that  is  no  reason 
why  we  should  refuse  to  ask  for  them  ;  he 
is  able  to  do  for  us  exceeding  abundantly 
above  all  that  we  ever  ask  or  think. 

1.  The  first  thought  suggested,  then,  is 
that  of  our  dependence  on  him  to  whom  we 
pray.  Every  good  and  perfect  gift  is  from 
him  —  this  one,  surely,  not  less  than  the 
rest.  For  health  to  earn  our  daily  bread, 
for  wisdom  to  keep  it  and  use  it,  we  de- 


THE   CONVENIENT  FOOD.  109 

pencl  upon  his'goodness.  The  habit  of  con- 
necting our  commonest  gifts  with  the  great 
Giver  is  a  habit  that  we  may  well  cultivate. 
It  is  thus  that  life  is  sanctified  and  enno- 
bled. "  Take  away  this  divine  symbolism 
from  our  material  existence,"  says  James 
Martineau,  "  and  let  it  stand  only  for  what 
it  can  make  good  on  its  own  account,  and 
Avhat  is  there  to  redeem  it  from  selfishness 
and  insignificance  ?  The  home  sinks  into  a 
house,  the  meal  into  a  mess,  the  grave  into 
a  pit."  Our  daily  bread  is  not  a  thing  too 
little  for  God  to  give,  nor  too  vulgar  for 
him  to  bless  ;  and  when  with  reverent  faith 
it  is  thus  received  as  a  gift  from  him,  the 
breaking  of  it  is  a  sacrament,  and  the  real 
presence  of  the  infinite  love  is  in  the  heart 
of  the  man  who  partakes  of  it  with  thanks- 
giving. 

2.  For  daily  Iread^  we  are  bidden  to 
ask.  The  word  is  specific,  not  generic.  It 
signifies,  primarily,  bread.  There  is  an- 
other word  which  means  food  in  general. 


110  TEE  LORD'S  PRAYER. 

The  use  of  this  word  in  this  place  seems  to 
hint  that  it  is  only  for  plain  and  simple  food 
that  we  ought  to  make  our  requests  unto 
God.  It  is  not,  Give  us  this  day  our  bill  of 
fare,  —  our  daily  three  courses  ;  it  is,  Give 
us  this  day  our  daily  bread.  It  is  a  prayer 
that  the  epicure  would  hardly  think  of  of- 
fering. And  while  we  need  not  adopt  any 
ascetic  theories  about  meat  or  drink,  we 
may  surely  attend  to  the  suggestion  con- 
veyed in  this  petition  of  a  simple  and  whole- 
some diet,  and  may  endeavor  to  make  our 
practices  tally  with  our  prayers. 

3.  Give  us  this  day  our  daily  bread.  The 
word  here  rendered  daily  has  been  the  sub- 
ject of  much  curious  discussion,  and  with 
good  reason ;  for  it  is  not  found  anywhere 
else  except  in  the  Lord's  Prayer.  It  does 
not  occur  in  any  other  place  in  the  New 
Testament,  and  it  is  not  used  by  any  other 
Greek  writer.  The  meaning  of  it  can  only 
be  inferred  from  the  etymology,  and  the  in- 
terpretation which  seems  to  me  most  sat- 


TEE  CONVENIENT  FOOD.  Ill 

isfactory  makes  it  equivalent  to  sufficient 
or  necessary.  This  meaning  does  not  alter 
the  force  of  the  petition  as  we  always  un- 
derstood it.  To  say  "  Give  us  this  day  suf- 
ficient bread  "  is  precisely  the  same  as  to 
say  "  Give  us  this  day  our  daily  bread." 
The  prayer  is  to  be  offered  every  day,  and 
it  asks  only  for  that  which  will  suffice  for 
the  day.  The  lesson  that  is  thus  conveyed 
is  one  of  moderation  in  our  wants.  We  are 
not  to  ask  for  abundance  or  superfluity,  we 
are  to  ask  only  for  what  we  need.  We  are 
not  to  pray  for  banks-  or  bins-  or  barns- 
or  cellars-full,  but  only  for  our  daily  bread. 
You  will  notice  that  this  is  the  only  peti- 
tion in  the  Lord's  Prayer  in  which  tempo- 
ralities are  mentioned,  and  our  normal  de- 
sire concerning  them,  which  is  pnt  into 
words  by  our  Lord,  hath  this  extent,  no 
more.  Just  imagine  the  average  American 
trying  to  put  his  wishes  for  worldly  good 
into  these  simple  words  !  The  things  that 
he  craves,  that  he  is  striving  after,  that  in 
liis   inmost  soul   he  is  praying  for,  —  how 


112  THE  LORD'S  PRATER. 

vast  and  multiform  are  they  when  measured 
by  this  humble  petition  !  What  he  would 
say  if  he  spoke  his  mind  in  his  prayers 
would  be :  "  Give  me  this  day  my  daily  ten 
per  cent. !  "  or  "  Give  me  this  day  a  boom- 
ing trade  !  "  or  "  Give  me  this  day  a  chance 
to  make  a  thousand  dollars!"  With  his 
mind  full  of  these  vast  schemes,  of  these 
eager  ambitions,  imagine  him  kneeling  in 
his  closet  in  the  morning  and  taking  upon 

his  lips  this  prayer :  "  Give  us  this  day 

our  daily  bread  I "  What  a  little  thing 
that  is  to  ask  for,  compared  with  the  things 
that  he  wants  and  is  working  for !  To 
what  a  sn?all  scale  this  prayer  is  drawn ! 
How  can  he  bring  his  inflated  speculations, 
his  racing  ambitions,  within  the  compass  of 
this  simple  prayer? 

It  will  be  hard  for  him  to  do  it,  no  doubt ; 
yet  it  will  be  well  for  him  to  try.  To  re- 
mind himself  thus,  every  day,  of  the  plan 
of  life  that  God  has  for  him  —  of  the  mod- 
erate and  frugal  temper  in  which  God  means 
that   he  shall  abide  —  will   be  instructive, 


TEE   CONVENIENT  FOOD.  113 

and  may  be  salutary.  If  he  thinks  what  this 
petition  means  when  he  utters  it,  he  will 
not  be  in  quite  so  much  haste  to  get  rich 
when  he  rises  from  his  knees ;  he  will  come 
a  little  nearer  to  understanding  that  a  man's 
life  consisteth  not  in  the  abundance  of  the 
things  which  he  possesseth. 

"  But  are  we  to  take  these  words  in 
strict  literalness  ?  "  some  one  asks.  "  Does 
this  petition  forbid  forethought  and  thrift? 
Must  we  desire  nothing  beyond  the  supply 
of  the  actual  wants  of  the  present  day  ?  Is 
it  wrong  for  us  to  lay  by  us  in  store  some- 
thing against  the  time  of  need  ?  " 

No  ;  I  do  not  think  we  can  put  quite  so 
much  meaning  as  this  into  these  words.  I 
do  not  suppose  that  our  Lord  meant  to  con- 
tradict the  counsel  of  the  wise  man,  who 
bids  the  sluggard  learn  of  the  ant  a  lesson 
of  providence.  The  virtue  of  thrift  is  in 
many  ways  directly  and  indirectly  enjoined 
and  commended  in  the  Scriptures. 

But  the  fact  is  that  this  prayer  is  very 
short,  and  it  is  meant  to  express  only  the 


114  THE  LORD'S  PRAYER. 

primary  wants  of  men.  There  are  otlier 
things  of  value,  but  their  value  is  second- 
ary. Sufficient  food  to  sustain  life  is  a  pri- 
mary want;  that  is  indispensable;  some 
store  in  the  cellar  or  bank,  something  laid 
by  against  a  rainy  day,  —  that  is  well ;  we 
may  wish  and  work  for  that,  and  pray  for 
it  too,  I  think  ;  but  it  is  of  secondary  iin- 
portance.  It  is  not  to  be  named  among  the 
indispensable  things.  We  will  take  it,  if  it 
comes,  and  be  thankful  for  it ;  and  pray  for 
wisdom  to  use  it  worthily ;  if  it  does  not 
come,  we  can  be  content  without  it. 

The  petition,  then,  calls  only  for  that 
which  is  absolutely  necessary,  and  teaches 
us  to  school  our  cravings  for  material  good 
into  soberness  and  moderation. 

4.  "  Give  us  this  day  our  daily  bread." 
It  is  given  to  us,  and  yet  it  is  ours.  We  re- 
ceive it  from  the  great  Giver  as  a  benefac- 
tion, yet  we  have  a  certain  sort  of  propri- 
etorship in  it.  How  does  it  become  ours  ? 
What  is  it  that  gives  us  the  right  to  speak 


THE   CONVENIENT  FOOD.  115 

of  it  as  if  it  were  a  possession  ?  Is  it  ours 
only  when  we  appropriate  it  ?  Is  it  ours 
as  the  children's  bread  is  theirs  — provided 
for  us,  and  set  before  us,  and  only  ours 
when  we  partake  of  it  ?  No  ;  I  think  there 
is  a  deeper  meaning  than  this.  God  does 
not,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  give  us  food  in  this 
absolute  way  ;  and  I  do  not  believe  that  he 
wishes  us  to  ask  him  to  provide  it  for  us  in 
this  way.  Our  daily  bread  is  to  be  ours, 
we  are  to  make  it  ours,  in  quite  another 
sense  than  that  in  which  the  infant  makes 
the  food  that  is  fed  to  him  his  own.  Our 
daily  bread  —  the  daily  bread  of  all  who  are 
able-bodied  adult  persons  —  is  ours  when 
we  have  earned  it ;  when  by  our  own  labor 
we  have  provided  it  for  ourselves.  If  we 
are  children,  too  young  to  work,  or  if  by 
reason  of  sickness  or  age  we  are  unable  to 
work,  then  we  may  thankfully  take  the 
food  that  the  love  of  others  provides  for  us. 
But  it  is  well  even  for  the  children  to  re- 
member that  they  can  do  something  toward 
helping  to  earn  their  daily  food ;  that  the 


116  TEE  LORD'S  PRAYER. 

little  tasks  and  errands  of  the  household 
which  they  are  competent  to  do  take  just 
so  much  of  burden  from  the  shoulders  of 
the  father  and  mother  by  whose  labor  they 
live  ;  and  that  they  cannot  very  consistently 
offer  this  prayer  unless  they  show  them- 
selves ready  and  willing  at  all  times  to  do 
these  little  services  that  are  within  their 
powers.  Their  daily  food  will  be  somewhat 
sweeter  to  them,  I  am  sure,  if  they  have 
the  consciousness  that  it  is  not  wholly  won 
for  them  by  the  toil  of  their  parents,  but 
that  they  have  helped  a  little  in  earning  it. 
It  is  not  good  for  children  to  feel  that  they 
are  tvliolly  dependent ;  the  sentiment  of 
honorable  self-support  ought  to  be  bred  in 
them  from  their  earliest  days.  As  they  are 
constantly  sharers  in  the  good  that  is  gath- 
ered for  the  household,  so  they  ought  to  be 
sharers,  in  some  wise  measure,  in  the  labor 
and  care  by  which  it  is  provided. 

"  Give  us  to-day  our  daily  bread,"  means 
then,  and  can  only  mean,  when  it  is  spoken 
by  healthy  men  and  women,  —  "  Give  us  a 


TEE  CONVENIENT  FOOD.  117 

chance  to  earn  our  daily  bread  by  some 
kind  of  liouest  work."  We  wish  to  eat  our 
own  bread,  not  some  one  else's.  Bread 
that  we  beg  is  not  ours;  bread  that  we 
take  as  lazy  pensioners  on  some  one  else's 
bounty  is  not  ours ;  bread  that  we  steal  is 
not  ours ;  bread  that  we  get  from  other 
people  by  fraud  and  extortion  and  over- 
reaching is  not  ours ;  only  the  bread  that 
we  have  earned  by  honest  work  and  fair 
traffic  is  ours.  "  Give  us  this  day  our 
daily  bread." 

Now  just  think  what  a  revolution  would 
be  wrought  in  our  social  and  industrial 
and  commercial  life,  if  everybody  devoutly 
offered  that  prayer  and  lived  up  to  it  every 
day !  How  many  idle  hands  for  which 
Satan  is  all  the  while  finding  mischief 
would  be  set  to  work.  How  much  of  greed 
and  fraud  and  craft  and  cruelty  would  at 
once  come  to  an  end ! 

Certain  it  is  that  there  are  large  classes 
in  our  civilized  society  who  do  not  intend 
to  eat  their  own  bread,  and  who  do  intend 


118  TEE  LORD'S  PRATER. 

to  eat  every  day  bread  that  belongs  to 
somebody  else  —  bread  that  they  have 
either  begged  or  stolen,  or  procured  by 
fraud  or  extortion. 

There  is  first  a  considerable  number  of 
grown-up  boys  and  girls   in  our  well-to-do 

families  who  are  out  of  school,  who  are  in 
absolute  idleness,  and  who  have  made  no 
strenuous  effort  to  find  anything  to  do. 
They  do  not  wish  to  earn  their  daily  bread. 
They  greatly  prefer  to  subsist  on  that 
which  their  parents  have  earned  and  saved 
for  them. 

There  is  also  another  class  of  paupers,  a 
little  lower  down,  who  are  not  ashamed  to 
beg,  and  who  mean  to  subsist  upon  the 
gifts  of  the  town  almoner,  or  upon  the  ben- 
efactions of  the  charitable  This  class  has 
been  growing  very  fast  of  late  in  all  our 
larger  towns  and  cities. 

There  is  another  class  of  people  who 
pretend  to  work,  but  who  mean  to  do  just 
as  little  as  they  can;  who  never  intend 
to  give  a  fair  day's  work  for  a  fair  day'a 


THE  CONVENIENT  FOOD.  119 

wages  if  they  can  help  it ;  who  will  shirk 
and  slight  and  botch  everything  they  do, 
caring  only  to  draw  their  pay  when  pay- 
day comes,  caring  nothing  at  all  for  the 
interest  of  those  who  employ  them.  Those 
who  employ  labor  have  a  sorry  sense,  some- 
times, of  the  prevalence  of  this  spirit  among 
those  who  work  for  hire.  Such  people  can- 
not honestly  ask  the  Lord  to  give  them 
their  daily  bread ;  it  is  not  theirs  that  they 
are  trying  to  get,  but  their  employers'. 

All  those  people  who  get  their  living  by 
ministering  to  the  vices  of  their  fellow-men 
belong  in  this  category.  The  money  that 
is  paid  for  vice  is  money  that  ought  to  be 
paid  for  daily  bread,  for  things  useful  and 
necessary.  Somebody  needs  it;  somebody 
suffers  without  it ;  and  he  who  takes  it  and 
gives  in  exchange  for  it  the  means  of  vi- 
cious indulgence  is  taking  somebody  else's 
daily  bread,  and  giving  nothing  for  it  so 
good  as  a  stone,  —  nothing  better  than  a 
scorpion.  If  he  lives  by  such  traffic  as 
this  he  never  eats  his  own  bread.     Think 


120  THE  LORD'S  PRAYER. 

of  a  man  who  keeps  a  tippling  shop  pray- 
ing every  morning,  "  Give  us  this  day  our 
daily  bread."  It  is  not  Ms  daily  bread  that 
he  means  to  eat ;  it  is  the  bread  that  be- 
longs to  the  haggard  wife  and  the  pale- 
faced  children  of  the  man  to  whom  he  sells 
the  daily  or  the  hourly  dram. 

All  those  persons  who  get  their  living 
by  gambling,  whether  it  be  in  gold  or 
stocks,  or  wheat  or  corn,  must  be  ranked 
in  the  same  class.  Gambling  is  not  a  pro- 
ductive occupation.  It  adds  nothing  what- 
ever to  the  world's  wealth ;  it  does  noth- 
ing whatsoever  to  facilitate  exchanges ;  its 
whole  effect  is  to  unsettle  values  and  keep 
business  feverish  and  dangerous.  The  men 
who  follow  this  nefarious  avocation  ren- 
der the  community  no  service  at  all ;  the 
world  is  not  enriched  materially  or  mental- 
ly or  morally  by  anything  they  do  ;  by  no 
stretch  of  charity  can  they  be  said  to  earn 
anything.  Yet  there  is  an  army  of  them, 
and  they  get  daily  bread  —  many  of  them  a 
good  deal  more  than  that.     It  is  not  theirs 


THE   CONVENIENT  FOOD.  121 

in  any  honest  sense  of  the  word ;  it  be- 
longs rightfully  to  somebody  else ;  every 
dollar  that  they  gain  makes  somebody  a 
dollar  poorer  and  nobody  richer  in  any- 
thing under  the  heaven.  I  should  not  wish, 
then,  to  hear  any  man  who  gambles  in  se- 
curities or  in  bread-stuffs  saying  "  Give  us 
this  day  our  daily  bread,"  for  I  should 
know  that  he  did  not  mean  what  he  said ; 
that  he  meant  to  eat  mine,  or  some  other 
man's,  and  not  his  own. 

Then  there  is  a  class  of  greedy  capital- 
ists, proprietors  of  great  companies,  mana- 
gers and  stockholders  of  large  corporations, 
employers  of  labor,  to  whom  this  prayer 
would  be  little  better  than  blasphemy. 
Understand,  that  I  am  not  speaking  of  all 
capitalists  or  organizers  of  labor,  but  only 
of  those  who  prove  by  their  deeds  that  they 
have  no  compassion  on  the  poor  ;  that  they 
mean  to  make  their  eight  or  ten  per  cent, 
even  though  to  do  it  they  are  obliged  to 
cut  the  workman's  wages  down  to  a  point 
at  which  it  is  hard  for  him  to  get  the  daily 


122  TEE  LORD'S  PRAYER. 

bread  for  his  children.  I  know  that  some 
companies  and  some  employers  are  quick 
to  share  with  their  laborers  their  increas- 
ing profits,  and  slow  to  reduce  wages  even 
when  profits  turn  to  losses ;  but  there  are 
others,  I  am  sorry  to  say,  who  even  in 
times  of  prosperity  crowd  labor  down  to 
the  starvation  point,  heaping  up  their  prof- 
its by  the  impoverishment  of  the  people 
who  do  their  work.  And  if  I  should  hear 
such  a  man  saying  this  prayer  I  should 
want  to  answer  him  :  "  My  dear  brother, 
do  you  not  know  that  God  knows  that  you 
are  not  speaking  truth  when  you  speak 
these  words  ?  Do  you  not  know  that  you 
are  not  content  with  your  daily  bread,  with 
what  you  have  fairly  gained,  but  that  you 
mean  to  rob  these  poor  people  who  work 
for  you  of  a  part  of  their  daily  bread  ?  Of 
course  you  will  not  do  it  by  meeting  the 
man  in  a  dark  lane,  as  he  is  returning  from 
his  labors,  and  knocking  him  down  and 
taking  his  loaf  out  of  his  basket  and  run- 
ning away  with  it;   you  will  do  it  in  strict 


THE  CONVENIENT  FOOD.  123 

accordance  with  the  laws  of  the  state  and 
the  law  of  supply  and  demand ;  you  will 
simply  take  advantage  of  the  crowded  labor 
market,  and  drive  a  sharp  bargain  with 
workmen  who  are  nigh  to  perishing." 

It  is  not,  then,  for  any  of  those  who  prey 
upon  their  fellow-men  —  whether  they  do 
it  by  the  law  or  in  defiance  of  the  law  —  to 
offer  this  petition.  He  who  sincerely  prays 
that  God  would  give  him  a  chance  to  earn 
his  daily  bread  by  honest  labor  prays  at 
the  same  time  that  other  men  may  have  an 
equal  chance.  "  Give  us  this  day  our  daily 
bread,"  the  prayer  is  :  not  "  Give  me  this 
day  my  daily  bread."  And  the  spirit  of 
the  petition  not  only  rouses  me  to  work  for 
my  own  livelihood ;  it  also  forbids  me  in 
any  way  to  hinder  or  prevent  my  neighbors 
from  gaining  their  livelihood ;  it  forbids 
me  to  eat  my  bread  in  idleness,  in  the  sweat 
of  other  men's  faces,  or  by  the  debauching 
of  their  lives. 

5,  There  are  some   among  us  who  may 


124  TEE  LORD'S  PRATER. 

seem  to  be  absolved  by  their  circumstances 
from  the  duty  of  offering  this  prayer.  Here 
is  a  man  whose  larders  are  full,  whose  cel- 
lars are  crowded,  whose  barns  are  bursting 
with  gathered  grain,  whose  bank  account 
shows  a  daily  balance  of  many  thousands, 
—  is  it  not  a  little  superfluous  for  him  to 
say  this  prayer  ?  Can  he  ask  without 
stammering  that  the  Lord  will  give  him 
this  day  his  daily  bread  when  he  knows 
that  he  has  enough  in  his  possession  not 
only  for  this  day  but  for  many  days  to 
come?  Should  not  those  whose  provisions 
are  so  ample,  whose  accumulations  are  so 
vast,  skip  this  petition  when  they  offer  the 
Lord's  Prayer?  Is  it  not  something  like 
mockery  for  them  to  take  these  words  upon 
their  lips  ? 

No ;  I  do  not  think  so.  Notice  again 
that  it  is  not  "  Give  me  my  daily  bread," 
nor  is  it  "  Give  me  and  my  household  our 
daily  bread,"  it  is  "Give  us  this  day  our 
daily  bread."  Who  are  included  in  these 
plural  pronouns  ?     How  many  are  there  of 


TEE  CONVENIENT  FOOD.  125 

"  ws "  ?  Just  as  many  as  are  included  in 
the  first  word  of  the  prayer.  That  "  our," 
we  said,  takes  in  all  mankind.  So  do  the 
pronouns  of  this  petition.  You  cannot 
give  them  any  narrower  meaning.  This 
prayer  throughout,  in  every  one  of  its 
phrases,  identifies  you  with  all  humanity. 
The  man  who  wishes  to  pray  only  for  him- 
self and  his  immediate  family  and  friends 
must  make  his  own  prayer;  the  Lord's 
Prayer  will  not  serve  his  purpose.  You 
cannot  intelligently  use  it  and  keep  your 
thought  fixed  upon  your  own  individual 
necessities,  or  on  the  needs  of  your  own 
household.  He  who  thoughtfully  takes 
these  words  upon  his  lips  takes  at  the 
same  time  all  human  wants  by  sympathy 
upon  his  own  soul,  and  craves  the  outpour- 
ing of  the  infinite  bounty  upon  every  needy 
humau  brother. 

Kneel,  then,  O  you  who  have  much  goods 
laid  up  for  many  years,  kneel  in  your  clos- 
ets and  around  your  family  altars  and  lift 
ap   to   the    heavenly    Father   this    prayer. 


126  THE  LORD'S  PRAYER. 

Think!  when  you  utter  it,  not  only  of 
those  who  surround  your  table,  —  think  of 
your  neighbors  too.  Some  of  them  are 
toiling  hard  for  small  wages,  and  find  it 
not  always  easy  to  keep  the  wolf  from  the 
door ;  some  of  them,  though  willing  to  work, 
stand  idle  in  the  market-place  because  no 
man  has  hired  them ;  some  of  them  are 
sick  and  helpless  and  those  who  lean  on 
them  are  destitute;  take  them  all  into  your 
thought,  fold  the  arms  of  human  brother- 
hood round  them  all,  and  then  say,  "  Give 
us  this  day  our  daily  bread."  Your  neigh- 
bors—  they  do  not  all  live  in  the  wards  of 
your  city ;  who  are  your  neighbors?  Every 
human  being  is  your  neighbor.  From  other 
lands  beyond  the  sea  sad  tales  of  famine 
come  to  your  ears ;  hunger  and  cold  are 
blanching  the  faces  of  little  children ;  while 
you  bow  before  the  throne  of  the  All-boun- 
tiful these  swarms  of  starving  wretches  will 
come  into  your  thought.  Let  them  come 
in  !  Make  room  in  your  hearts  for  all  of 
them,    and   then   say   again,    speaking   for 


THE   CONVENIENT  FOOD.  127 

them  more  than  for  yourself,  "  Give  us  this 
day  our  daily  bread." 

I  care  not  how  vast  your  possessions, 
how  abundant  your  stores,  this  prayer  is 
for  you.  Humbly,  thankfully,  heartily  ut- 
ter it,  and  then  say  each  one  to  himself, 
"  Is  there  nothing  that  I  can  do  to  help  in 
answering  this  prayer?  Cannot  I  be  God's 
almoner  to  one  or  two  of  these  needy  and 
famishing  thousands  ?  Cannot  /  give  this 
day  in  Christ's  name  daily  bread  to  some 
who  are  perishing  without  it,  or,  better  still, 
can  I  not  help  some  of  them  to  find  a  way 
of  earning  it  for  themselves  ?  " 

I  do  not  think,  my  friends,  that  I  have 
strained  one  word  of  this  petition  beyond 
its  natural  and  obvious  sense  in  my  inter- 
pretation, and  surely  we  have  found  a  great 
deal  in  it,  far  more  than  I  ever  thought 
was  in  it  before  I  began  to  study  it.  No 
one  can  intelligently  offer  this  petition 
without  learning  from  it,  whenever  he  ut- 
ters it,  a  lesson  of  humble  dependence  on 


128  THE  LORD'S  PRAYER. 

God  for  daily  mercies,  —  a  lesson  of  fru- 
gality, a  lesson  of  self-support,  a  lesson  of 
equity,  a  lesson  of  charity.  All  that  is  in  it 
and  coraes  naturally  out  of  it  so  soon  as  we ' 
begin  to  think  of  what  the  words  mean.  It 
is  a  prayer  for  rich  men  quite  as  much  as 
for  poor  men  ;  but  it  is  a  prayer  that  no 
man  can  utter,  without  deceit  and  mock- 
ery, who  does  not  mean  to  do  justly  and 
to  love  mercy,  —  that  ought  to  blister  the 
],ips  of  any  man  whose  deeds  show  that  he 
is  willing  to  live  by  begging  or  shirking  or 
cheating  or  stealing,  or  by  preying  on  the 
vices  or  the  necessities  of  his  fellow-men. 

God   helj)  us  all  to  live  so  that  it  shall 
not  be  mockery  to  say,  every  day,  — 
"  Give  us  this  day  our  dally  bread  ! " 


VI. 
THE    FORGIVING   GRACE. 

And  forgive  us  our  debts  as  we  forgive  our  debtors. 

Matt.  vi.  12. 

"  There  is  one  very  simple  lesson,"  says 
Mr.  Ruskin  in  his  comment  on  this  petition, 
"  needed  especially  by  jDcople  in  circum- 
stances of  happy  life,  which  I  have  never 
heard  fully  enforced  from  the  pulpit,  and 
■which  is  usually  the  more  lost  sight  of  be- 
cause the  fine  and  inaccurate  word  '  tres- 
passes '  is  so  often  used  instead  of  the  sim- 
ple and  accurate  one  '  debts.'  Among  people 
well-educated  and  happily  circumstanced  it 
may  easily  chance  that  long  periods  of  their 
lives  pass  without  any  such  conscious  sin  as 
could,  on  any  discovery  or  memory  of  it, 
mtike  them  cry  out  in  truth  and  in  pain, 
'  I  have  sinned  against  the  Lord.'  But 
scarcely  an  holir  of  their  happy  days  can 
9 


130  TEE  LORD'S  PRAYER. 

pass  without  leaving,  "were  their  hearts 
open,  some  evidence  written  there  that 
they  have  'left  undone  the  things  that 
they  ought  to  have  done,'  and  giving  them 
bitterer  and  heavier  cause  to  cry,  and  cry 
again,  forever,  in  the  pure  words  of  the 
Master's  prayer,  '  Forgive  us  our  debts.'  " 

The  word  trespasses  is  used  by  the  Mas- 
ter himself  a  little  later  in  this  discourse,  in 
explaining  this  petition :  "  For  if  ye  forgive 
men  their  trespasses,  your  heavenly  Father 
will  also  forgive  you.  But  if  ye  forgive  not 
men  their  trespasses,  neither  will  your  Fa- 
ther forgive  your  trespasses."  Yet,  as  Mr. 
Ruskin  says,  the  word  debts  is  more  ex- 
act and  more  comprehensive  than  the  word 
trespasses.  It  includes  both  kinds  of  faults, 
—  the  things  done  and  the  things  left  un- 
done. The  contrast  is  not  quite  so  strong 
between  the  two  Greek  words  for  which 
these  words  stand ;  but  the  English  tres- 
pass, on  account  of  its  use  as  a  legal  term, 
conveys  to  most  minds  the  notion  of  an 
encroachment  upon  other  people's  rights ; 


THE  FORGIVING   GRACE.  131 

and  one  who  asks  to  liave   his  trespasses 
forgiven  may  think  when  he  prays  only  of 
such  overt   and   injurious   deeds  as  these. 
But   debts   are   duties   owed   to    God   and; 
man,  owed  and  not  paid,  —  and  those  whoi 
live   the   most  quiet   and    inoffensive   lives! 
must  find,  if  they  stop  to  think  about  it, 
such  liabilities   as  these  weighing   heavily  i 
upon  their  consciences. 

It  is  also  well  to  recall  a  truth  that  ought 
to  be  familiar,  —  that  in  Christ's  own  rep- 
resentation of  the  judgment  to  come  it  is 
these  duties  left  undone,  rather  than  any 
crimes  done,  that  furnish  the  ground  of  con- 
demnation :  "  I  was  hungry,  and  ye  gave 
me  no  meat  ....  Inasmuch  as  ye  did  it 
not." 

It  is  our  neglect,  then,  as  well  as  our 
transgression,  our  idleness  as  well  as  our 
■violence,  our  indifference  as  well  as  our  ex- 
tortion, our  apathy  as  well  as  our  excess,  our 
coolness  as  well  as  our  hate  and  scorn,  for 
which  we  here  pray  to  be  forgiven. 


132  THE  LORD'S  PRATER. 

The  key  word  of  this  petition  is  the  little 
word  as.  "  Forgive  us  our  debts  as  we  for- 
give our  debtors."  We  ask  not  simply  to 
have  our  offenses  and  deficiencies  forgiven  ; 
we  ask  to  have  them  forgiven  in  a  certain 
way,  according  to  a  certain  rule  or  standard. 
In  Luke's  version  of  the  prayer  the  phrase- 
ology is  different,  but  the  meaning  is  the 
same :  "  Forgive  us  our  sins,  for  we  also 
forgive  every  one  that  is  indebted  to  us." 
The  forgiveness  that  we  ask  for  is  compared 
with  and  conditioned  on  the  forgiveness 
that  we  grant.  We  forgive  those  who  have 
wronged  us,  therefore  forgive  us.  As  we 
forgive  those  who  have  wronged  us,  so  for- 
give us." 

That  may  seem  a  hard  and  impracticable 
rule,  but  that  is  the  rule.  Whenever  you 
offer  the  Lord's  prayer  you  ask  that  the 
hind  of  forgiveness  you  mete  to  others  shall 
be  measured  to  you  by  the  Father  of  mer- 
cies. 

Let  us  see  how  this  rule  will  work  in  a 
number  of  such  cases  as  are  occurring  every 
day. 


THE  FORGIVING   GRACE.  133 

"  That  man  has  wronged  me,"  &^ys  one, 
"  and  I  never  can  forgive  liini.  I  have  no 
purposes  of  revenge  ;  I  will  let  him  alone 
if  he  will  keep  out  of  my  way;  but  the 
wrong  that  he  has  done  me  is  irreparable, 
and  it  is  useless  to  ask  me  to  overlook  it  or 
make  light  of  it.     I  will  not  forgive  him." 

Well,  my  friend,  that  makes  it  a  pretty 
serious  thing  for  you  to  say  the  Lord's 
Prayer.  "  Forgive  us  our  debts,"  you  say, 
"  as  we  forgive  our  debtors."  Forgive  me 
the  wrong  I  have  done,  just  as  I  forgive  the 
wrong  this  enemy  of  mine  has  done  to  me  ; 
which  is,  being  interpreted  by  your  unre- 
lenting grudge,  "  Forgive  me  not  at  all  ; 
forgive  me  never."  That  is  a  fearful  praj^er 
to  offer  ;  but  it  is  exactly  what  the  Lord's 
Prayer  means  in  the  mouth  of  every  man 
whose  heart  holds  an  implacable  resent- 
ment. 

"I  can  forgive  my  enemy,"  says  an- 
other, "  I  will  always  treat  him  well ;  but 
T  never  can  forget  the  injury  he  has  done 
me.     The  recollection  of   that  wrong  ran- 


184  THE  LORD'S  PRAYER. 

kles  in  my  breast,  and  I  could  not  forget  it 
if  I  should  try." 

This,  then,  is  the  spirit  in  which  you  ex- 
pect your  heavenly  Father  to  deal  with  you. 
You  wish  him  simj^ly  to  let  you  off,  to  quash 
the  indictment  against  you  and  set  you 
free ;  but  you  expect  him  to  keep  always  in 
,mind  the  wrongs  that  you  have  done,  and 
never  to  think  of  you  without  thinking  of 
them.  The  sort  of  forgiveness  which  is  ex- 
pressed by  the  common  saying,  "  I  can  for- 
give, but  I  cannot  forget,"  is  not  a  very 
liberal  sort ;  bitterness  and  wrath  are  mixed 
with  it ;  do  you  want  wrath  and  bitterness 
mingled  with  God's  forgiveness  of  you  ? 
That  is  what  you  ask  for  when,  with  this 
spirit  in  your  heart,  you  take  this  prayer 
upon  your  lips. 

"  I  am  ready  to  forgive  him,"  says  an- 
other, "  when  he  is  ready  to  be  forgiven.  It 
will  be  soon  enough  for  me  to  grant  him 
pardon  when  he  asks  for  it." 

But  suppose  that  your  heavenly  Father 
bad  followed  this  rule  in  his  treatment  of 


THE  FORGIVING   GRACE.  135 

you,  and  of  all  mankind.     Suppose  that  he, 
upon  his  throne  of  holiness  and  justice,  had 
said  :   "  It  will  be  time  enough  for  me  to  be 
reconciled    to    these    sinful    and    thankless 
children  of  mine  when  thej^  seek  to  be  rec- 
onciled.     When  they  repent  of  their  trans- 
gression and  ingratitude  and  return  to  me 
with  contrite  hearts,  I  will  show  my  grace 
to  them  and  not  before."     If  that  had  been 
the    divine    purpose    from    the    beginning, 
where   now  would    the   race  of   men    have 
been,  and  what  would  have  been  the  out- 
look for  you  and  me  ?     It  was  not  the  grace 
that  waits  for  contrition  and  confession,  but 
the  grace  that  goes   before  them  and  pre- 
pares the  way  for  them,  that  saved  sinners. 
It  was  when  we  were  enemies  that  we  were 
reconciled  to  God  by  the  death  of  his  Son. 
The  largest  and  best  part  of  God's  forgive- 
ness is  that  which  precedes  man's  repent- 
ance.    Do  we  mean  to  say  to  him,  in  our 
prayers,  that  this  antecedent  and    unsolic- 
ited srace  of  his,  which  overcomes  our  en- 
mity  and  wins  our  confidence,  is  superfluous 


136  THE  LORD'S  PRAYER. 

and  nugatory?  Is  this  what  our  petition 
means,  "  Give  us  always  the  mercy  that 
we  ask  for  and  no  more."  We  are  sinning 
every  day,  and  it  is  tlie  goodness  of  God 
that  leads  us  to  repentance.  Do  we  wish, 
in  our  prayers,  to  announce  to  God  that  we 
will  have  none  of  this  goodness  ?  That  is 
precisely  what  our  prayers  mean  when  we 
say  that  we  will  grant  our  pardon  only  to 
those  who  sue  for  it,  and  then  pray,  "  For- 
give us  our  debts  as  we  forgive  our  debt- 
ors." 

It  is  plain  that  this  announcement  of  a 
common  measure  between  the  human  and 
the  divine  forgiveness,  this  declaration  that 
men  can  only  ask  for  the  kind  of  pardon 
that  they  are  ready  to  grant,  is,  in  it- 
self, a  rather  startling  word  from  God  to 
men. 

"  The  mercy  I  to  others  show, 
That  mercy  show  to  me," 

is  the  substance  of  this  petition  ;  and  none 
but  a  good  man  can  offer  it  without  calling 
down  wrath  upon    his  own    head.     I    fear 


THE  F.ORGIVING   GRACE.  137 

that  tbere  are  not  many  of  us  who  would 
not  be  filled  with  fear,  if  we  thought  that 
we  were  really  going  to  be  forgiven  by  our  | 
heavenly  Father  in  just  the  same  way  that: 
we  have  been  in  the  habit  of  forgiving  those 
who  have  injured  us.  And  if  the  forgive- 
ness that  we  supplicate  from  him  must  be 
the  same  as  that  which  we  extend  to  others, 
it  is  hish  time  that  we  began  to  ask  our- 
selves  what  kind  of  forgiveness  it  is  that 
we  ai-e  wont  to  extend  to  others.  We  shall 
discover,  no  doubt,  that  it  is  often  a  surly 
and  stingy  sort  of  forgiveness  ;  and  we  shall 
see  that  our  method  needs  to  be  reformed 
altogether.  By  what  standard  shall  we  re- 
form it  ?  I  know  no  better  standard  than 
that  which  is  exhibited  in  the  gracious  deal- 
ings of  God  with  his  children. 

For  although,  as  I  have  said,  we  have  no 
right  to  ask  God  for  a  quality  of  mercy  that 
we  are  not  ready  to  grant  to  others,  yet 
God,  of  his  infinite  grace,  shows  us  mercy 
far  more  full  and  free  than  we  have  a  right 
to  ask  for ;  far  more  full  and  free  than  that 


138  THE  LORD'S  PRAYER. 

which  we  show  to  others  ;  if  he  did  not  it 
would  go  hard  with  us.  Even  with  those 
of  us  who  are  full  of  spites  and  gi-udges 
he  is  patient  and  long-suffering ;  it  is  his 
abounding  love  that  Avins  us  out  of  our  en- 
mities. We  can  learn,  then,  what  must  be 
our  temper,  when  we  pray  to  be  forgiven, 
only  by  studying  the  acts  and  attributes  of 
him  by  whom  we  hope  to  be  forgiven. 
When  we  see  how  God  forgives  we  shall 
not  only  know  how  we  ought  to  forgive 
others,  but  also  in  what  mind  we  must  be 
when  we  ask  for  his  forgiveness. 

This  is  no  strange  thing.  We  always 
learn  what  to  ask  for  in  our  prayers  by 
seeking  to  know  what  God  has  made  ready 
for  us.  That  is  always  the  very  thing  we 
need. 

If  I  could  only  succeed  now  in  erasing 
froin  your  minds  all  the  analogies  and  fig- 
ures that  are  borrowed  from  human  govern- 
ments to  illustrate  the  divine  government, 
the  task  of  making  plain  the  truth  respect- 


THE  FORGIVING   GRACE.  109 

ing  the  divine  forgiveness  would  be  greatly 
simplified.  The  governmental  terms  which 
are  used  in  the  Bible — sparingly  there, 
however — have  been  laid  hold  of  by  theo- 
logians, and  made  to  serve  not  only  as  the 
form  of  all  sound  doctrine,  but  even  as  the 
substance  thereof.  Everything  that  God 
does  is  brought  under  some  kind  of  govern- 
mental act  or  operation  ;  the  rules  of  polit- 
ical expediency  are  supposed  to  explain  all 
his  dealings  with  the  children  of  men.  The 
maxims  on  which  a  human  magistrate  acts 
are  assumed  to  be  the  maxims  on  which 
God  acts ;  what  a  human  magistrate  can 
wisely  do,  God  can  do ;  what  a  human 
magistrate  cannot  wisely  do,  God  cannot 
do.  It  would  be  difficult  to  invent  any  sort 
of  contrivance  that  would  more  effectually 
befog  the  whole  subject.  For  the  fact  is 
that  the  analogies  of  human  government  are 
utterly  inadequate  to  explain  God's  dealings 
with  men.  The  political  rules  on  which  the 
wisest  and  best  human  magistrate  must  act 
are  wholly  unlike  those  on  which  God  acts : 


140 


THE  LORD'S  PRAYER. 


the  canons  of  expediency  that  he  must  ob- 
serve do  not  limit  infinite  wisdom  and  in- 
finite power  and  infinite  love.  That  a  Be- 
ing who  is  both  omniscient  and  omnipotent 
is  shut  up  to  the  methods  of  human  magis- 
trates is  altogether  improbable.  Our  gov- 
ernor could  not  pardon  every  criminal  in 
our  prisons  who  professed  to  be  penitent, 
simply  because  our  governor  cannot  tell 
who  is  penitent  and  who  is  not ;  every  man 
of  them  would  profess  at  once  to  be  deeply 
contrite  and  radically  reformed,  and  the 
great  majority  of  them  would  return,  on  be- 
ing set  free,  to  their  old  ways.  But  if  our 
governor  could  know  absolutely  (as  he  never 
can)  that  a  certain  man  in  our  jail  was  thor- 
oughly reformed  in  heart  and  life,  and  that, 
if  he  were  released,  he  would  always  be  a 
useful,  upright,  honorable  citizen,  then  it 
would  be  the  duty  of  our  governor  to  par- 
don that  man  and  set  him  at  liberty.  The 
law  would  not  be  honored  by  keeping  any 
such  man  in  custody  a  single  day,  no  matter 
what  his   past  life  had  been.     The  law  is 


THE  FORGIVING   GRACE.  141 

intended  to  secure  righteousness,  nothing 
else;  it  ought  to  be  a  minister  of  wrath 
only  to  them  that  work  unrighteousness  ;  it 
should  not,  and  if  it  is  a  perfect  law  it  can- 
not, keep  any  man  in  condemnation  who  is 
now  heartily,  and  who  will  henceforth  be 
loyally,  on  the  side  of  righteousness. 

The  most  important  limitations  of  pardon 
in  the  case  of  the  human  magistrate  are, 
therefore,  those  which  arise  out  of  his  igno- 
rance. He  cannot  pardon  the  truly  peni- 
tent, not  because  to  do  so  would  be  any  det- 
riment to  the  state  or  any  dishonor  to  the 
law,  but  simply  because  he  does  not  know 
and  cannot  know  who  is  truly  penitent. 
Our  human  administration  of  law  is  at  best 
but  a  clumsy  and  imperfect  operation  ;  and 
to  argue  from  the  methods  to  which  it  must 
in  its  feebleness  resort  to  the  methods  of 
divine  goYernment  is  the  depth  of  absurd- 
ity. 

Suppose  now  you  let  go  a  little  while  of 
these  governmental  analogies  and  take  hold 
of  the  thought  which  this  prayer  enforces, 


142  THE  LORD'S  PRAYER. 

that  God  is  our  Father.  Is  it  true  that  a 
father  cannot,  without  endangering  the  wel- 
fare of  the  household,  forgive  an  erring 
child  whom  he  has  good  reason  to  believe 
to  be  truly  penitent?  Suppose  one  of  my 
children  transgresses  one  of  my  commands. 
I  am  in  entire  ignorance  of  the  fact,  and 
there  is  no  prospect  of  its  being  discovered, 
but  the  conscience  of  the  transgressor  be- 
gins to  work ;  he  is  sorry  for  his  offense  and 
ashamed  of  it ;  and  by  and  by  he  comes  to 
me  and  tells  me  all  about  it  and  asks  me  to 
forgive  him.  I  have  the  very  best  reasons 
for  believing  that  he  is  sincere  in  this,  and 
that  he  will  continue  to  be  dutiful  and  obe- 
dient in  time  to  come.  Do  you  say  that  if 
I  forgive  this  child  without  punishing  him 
I  ^hall  undermine  the  family  government? 
I  say  that  I  could  in  no  other  way  so 
weaken  the  family  government  as  by  refus- 
ing to  forgive  him.  I  say  that  I  could  no 
more  deny  one  of  mine  who  came  to  me  in 
this  way  than  I  could  deny  him  food  if  he 
needed  it.     What   sort  of   family  govern* 


THE  FORGIVING   GRACE.  143 

ment  would  that  be  wliicli  would  be  under- 
mined by  the  free  forgiveness  of  a  child 
who  showed  that  he  was  not  merely  afraid 
of  punishment,  but  heartily  sorry  for  the 
wrong  that  he  had  done,  and  honestly  de- 
termined to  make  all  the  amends  for  it  in 
his  power? 

If,  then,  we  simply  forbear  to  force  all 
our  thoughts  about  God's  dealings  with  us 
into  the  forms  of  human  jurisprudence,  and 
remember  that  the  central  and  crowning 
truth  of  our  relation  to  him  is  that  he  is 
our  heavenly  Father,  we  shall  not  feel  that 
we  are  obliged  in  our  theories  to  limit  his 
power  to  forgive  sinners  who  are  truly  con- 
trite and  obedient.  Therejieyer^was  a  mo- 
ment  since  the  worlds  were  made  when  God 
could  not  pardon  any  sinner  who  was  heart- 
ily sorry  for  his  sin,  and  desirous  of  walking 
in  the  ways  of  righteousness.  To  refuse 
pardon  to  such  an  one  would  be  to  doom 
him  to  continue  in  alienation  from  God. 
By  such  a  refusal  God  would  become  the 
upholder  and  maintainer  of  sin.  That  he 
can  never  be. 


144  THE  LORD'S  PRAYER. 

I  have  been  speaking,  thus  far,  of  only 
one  phase  of  the  great  fact  of  the  divine 
forgiveness,  the  lesser  and  lower  part  of  it. 
What  I  have  been  speaking  of  is  simply  the 
release  of  the  sinner  from  penalty  —  what 
is  technically  called  pardon  or  remission  of 
punishment.  I  have  shown  that  God  is 
willing  and  able  to  pardon  any  sinner  who 
is  truly  penitent.  And  this,  I  suppose,  is 
about  all  that  is  commonly  meant  by  the 
divine  forgiveness.  But  the  divine  forgive- 
ness means  a  great  deal  more  than  this. 
For,  as  we  have  seen  already,  the  forgiving 
love  of  God  begins  its  work  upon  the  sin- 
ner while  he  is  yet  an  enemy,  long  before 
lie  is  ready  to  ask  for  pardon.  When  he 
has  come  to  this,  that  he  is  willing  to  ask 
for  pardon,  that  work  is  well-nigh  done.  It 
is  in  the  love  of  God,  the  free,  unsolicited, 
prevenient  grace  of  God  that  compasses  him 
round  and  makes  plain  to  him  the  peril  of 
his  evil  ways,  and  sounds  in  his  ears  the 
offers  of  the  divine  compassion,  and  gently 
constrains  him  to  repent  and  return  to  obe- 


THE  FORGIVING  GRACE.  145 

dience  and  trust,  —  it  is  in  this  that  we 
see  what  the  divine  forgiveness  is.  There 
is  one  New  Testament  word,  translated 
forgive,  that  means  all  this.  It  does  not 
signify  simply  to  discharge  an  offender,  to 
release  from  a  penalty  ;  it  means  to  show 
grace  unto,  to  deal  grace  upon,  another.  It 
suggests  all  that  patient,  loving  work  of 
kindness  and  self-sacrifice,  by  which  the  one 
who  has  been  wronged  seeks  to  gain  the 
love  of  the  one  who  has  wronged  him,  and 
to  reclaim  him  from  his  sins.  The  mean- 
ing which  we  must  put  into  the  word  for- 
give when  it  represents  this  word  is  infi- 
nitely larger  than  that  which  belongs  to  it 
when  it  represents  the  other  word,  which 
only  signifies  to  remit  a  penalty.  Here  is 
one  of  the  texts  in  which  we  find  the  larger 
word  :  "  Be  ye  kind  to  one  another,  tender- 
hearted, forgiving  one  another,  even  as  God 
in  Christ  hath  forgiven  you." 

Here  then  is  the  field  in  which  the  divine 
forgiveness  begins  its  blessed  work  for  men. 
Far  back  of  man's  contrition  this  grace  is 

10 


146  THE  LORD'S  PRATER. 

manifested.  Man  is  not  forgiven  because 
he  repents ;  be  repents  because  he  is  for- 
■  given.  It  is  the  goodness  of  God  that  leads 
him  to  repentance.  What  kind  of  good- 
ness ?  God's  providential  favors  merely  ? 
No  ;  but  the  suffering  and  reconciling  love 
of  God  in  Christ. 

"  For  we  ourselves  also,"  says  the  great 
apostle,  "  were  sometimes  foolish,  disobedi- 
ent, deceived,  serving  divers  lusts  and  pleas- 
ures, living  in  malice  and  envy,  hateful  and 
hating  one  another.  But  after  that  the 
kindness  and  love  of  God  our  Saviour  ap- 
peared, not  by  works  of  righteousness  which 
we  have  done,  but  according  to  his  mercy 
he  saved  us,  by  the  washing  of  regeneration 
and  renewing  of  the  Holy  Ghost  which  he 
shed  on  us  abundantly  through  Jesus  Christ 
our  Saviour." 

"  And  you,"  he  says  in  another  place, 
"  that  were  sometime  alienated  and  enemies 
in  your  mind  by  wicked  works,  yet  now 
hath  he  reconciled  in  the  body  of  his  flesh 
through  death,  to  present  you  holy  and  un- 
blamable and  unreprovable  in  his  sight." 


THE  FORGIVING   GRACE.  147 

Such,  then,  is  God's  metliocl  of  forgiveness. 
To  those  who  are  alienated  from  him  and 
enemies  in  their  minds,  to  those  who  are 
hateful  and  suspicious  and  scornful,  he 
draws  near,  and,  without  forcing  his  love 
upon  them,  he  lays  loving  siege  to  them, 
and  by  all  the  gentle  ministries  of  his  spirit, 
and  all  the  marvelous  tokens  of  his  dying 
love  in  Jesus  Christ  our  Lord,  seeks  to  sub- 
due their  enmity  and  to  reconcile  them  unto 
himself.  He  not  only  has  a  pardon  waiting  i 
for  every  sinner  who  will  accept  it,  but  hei 
is  doing  continually  all  that  he  can  do,  with-j 
out  breaking  down  the  man's  freedom,  to 
change  his  stubborn  mind  and  his  rebellious 
heart,  and  make  him  willing  to  ask  for  the 
pardon  that  is  waiting  for  him.  This  is 
God's  way  of  forgiving. 

And  this,  ray  friends,  is  the  way  that  we 
want  him  to  forgive  us.  We  do  not  de- 
serve all  this  love  but  we  need  it,  and  we 
cannot  do  without  it.  If  it  were  not  for 
this  infinite  compassion,  this  abounduig 
grace,  there  would   be   small   hope  for  us. 


148  THE  LORD'S  PRAYER. 

If  God  were  only  compassionate  and  kind 
to  us  when  we  were  obedient  and  dutiful  to 
him  it  would  go  hard  with  us.  The  only 
.  foundation  of  our  hope  is  in  the  fact  that 
he  remembers  us  even  when  we  forget  him ; 
that  he  is  faithful  to  us  when  we  are  un- 
faithful to  him ;  that  he  is  patient  with  us 
when  we  sorely  provoke  him ;  that  he  fol- 
lows after  us  when  we  go  astray  from  him. 
This  is  the  only  grace  that  is  sufficient  for 
us ;  and  surely  it  is  nothing  less  than  this 
abounding  grace  that  we  ask  for  when  we 
pray  to  him. 

Well,  then,  if  we  ask  for  it,  we  must  be 
ready  to  extend  it  to  others. 

God's  forgiveness  includes  self-sacrificing 
love,  a  giving  of  himself  for  sinners.  If  we 
are  to  be  the  children  of  our  Father  in 
heaven,  if  we  are  worthily  to  offer  this 
prayer  which  Christ  has  taught  us,  we  must 
be  ready  to  give  ourselves  for  those  who 
have  injured  us. 

Is  this  a  hard  saying  ?  No  harder  than 
any  other  requirement  of  the  perfect  law  of 


THE  FORGIVING   GRACE.  149 

love.  It  is  the  steady  and  uniform  teach- 
ing of  the  New  Testament.  No  doctrhie 
ever  fell  from  the  lips  of  Christ  or  his  apos- 
tles that  conflicted  with  this  prayer.  It  is, 
indeed,  one  of  the  rudiments  of  Christian 
morality.  Alas,  that  there  are  so  many 
Christians  who  have  not  begun  to  learn  it ! 
Yet  I  think  we  are  getting  on  a  little  in 
our  understanding  of  this  virtue.  Lord 
Herbert  of  Cherbury,  a  brother  of  the  poet 
George  Herbert,  and  an  English  nobleman 
of  the  seventeenth  century,  has  a  passage 
in  his  autobiography  bearing  upon  this 
matter.  "  I  am  confident,"  he  says,  "  that 
in  the  forgiveness  of  injuries  no  man  of  my 
time  hath  exceeded  me  ;  for  though  when- 
soever my  honor  hath  been  engaged  no  man 
hath  been  more  forward  to  hazard  his  life, 
yet  when  with  my  honor  I  could  forgive, 
I  never  used  revenge,  as  leaving  it  always 
to  God,  who,  the  less  I  punish  mine  enemies, 
will  inflict  so  much  the  more  punishment  on 
them."  That  is  surely  not  a  very  Christian 
reason  for  forgiving  one's  foes.     Other  rea- 


150  THE  LORD'S  PRAYER. 

sons  that  he  gives  are  also  curious  :  "  When 
a  man  wants  and  comes  short  of  an  entire 
and  accomplished  virtue,  our  defects  may 
be  supplied  this  way,  since  the  forgiving  of 
evil  deeds  in  others  amounteth  to  virtue  in 
us  ;  that  therefore  it  may  not  unaptly  be 
called  the  paying  our  debts  with  another 
man's  money."  The  notion  seems  to  be 
that  forgiveness  is  a  work  of  supereroga- 
tion, and  that  it  helps  to  balance  the  ac- 
count of  our  sins.  He  comes  a  little  nearer 
to  a  just  view  when  he  says,  "That  he  that 
cannot  forgive  others  breaks  the  bridge  over 
which  he  must  pass  himself ;  for  every  man 
has  need  to  be  forgiven."  We  will  trust 
that  Lord  Herbert's  frank  judgment  that 
no  man  of  his  time  had  exceeded  him  in 
forgiveness  was  somewhat  too  favorable  to 
himself ;  certainly  we  will  hope  that  a  good 
many  in  our  time  have  somewhat  clearer 
notions  about  it. 

Yet  I  am  afraid  that  there  are  few  in 
these  days,  even  of  those  who  have  long 
been  members  of  the  Church  of  Christ,  to 


THE  FORGIVING   GRACE.  151 

whom  Christ's  clear  command,  "  Love  your 
enemies  ;  do  good  to  them  that  hate  you  and 
pray  for  them  that  despitefuUy  use  you  and 
persecute  you,"  does  not  seem  rather  a  vis- 
ionary and  doubtful  maxim.  But  there  is 
no  commandment  of  his  that  is  more  nearly 
universal  in  its  obligation,  none  that  is  to 
be  more  literally  and  exactly  obeyed,  none 
that  reaches  more  directly  the  foundations 
of  Christian  character,  none  that  is  more 
evidently  intended  for  every-day  use.  It 
is  not  only  the  few  Christians  of  excep- 
tional piety  who  are  to  love  their  enemies  ; 
it  is  one  of  the  very  first  things  expected  of 
every  disciple  of  Jesus  Christ. 

That  word  of  Christ's  about  "  gaining  " 
a  brother  who  has  trespassed  against  you 
is  a  luminous  word.  That  is  the  very  thing 
to  do.  If  his  spirit  is  bad,  if  he  is  full  of 
envy  and  malice,  if  the  wrong  that  he  has 
done  you  was  cruel  and  unprovoked,  these 
are  the  very  reasons  why  you  should  con- 
quer his  hate  by  your  kindness,  thus  losing 
a  foe  and  gaining  a  brother.    And  a  brother 


152  THE  LORD'S   PRAYER. 

is  worth  gaining.  Of  all  the  gains  we  make 
none  are  so  precious  as  those  of  friendship. 
To  have  secured  one  more  wise  and  loyal 
friend  is  to  have  greatly  enlarged  your  rev- 
enues. And  a  friend  won  in  this  way,  one 
who  has  surrendered  an  unreasoning  enmity 
to  your  victorious  love,  can  hardly  fail  to 
be  a  friend  forever. 

Have  you  never  gained  with  such  weap- 
ons such  a  victory  as  this  ?  Is  there  not 
one  among  your  friends  who  was  once  your 
foe?  And  did  you  not  find  in  the  self- 
denials  by  which  you  gained  him  an  exceed- 
ing great  reward  ? 

Some  of  you  think  that  this  is  an  enter- 
prise that  requires  for  the  prosecution  of  it 
more  grace  than  you  possess.  Do  not  think 
so  poorly  of  yourself.  Surely,  if  you  have 
ever  begun  to  learn  of  Jesus  Christ,  you  can 
feel  something  of  the  strength  of  the  mo- 
tives that  urge  us  to  this  service. 

You  find  it  hard  to  enter  upon  such  pa- 
tient and  self-denying  efforts  to  win  the 
love  of   your  enemies.     You  do   not   wish 


THE  FORGIVING   GRACE.  153 

them  any  harm,  yon  say  ;  if  you  ever  had 
purposes  of  revenge  you  have  long  ago  dis- 
missed these  from  your  thought ;  you  will 
even  treat  them  courteously  when  you  meet 
them  ;  but  to  love  them,  to  undertake  in 
any  way  to  show  affection  for  them  and  to 
seek  to  change  their  enmity  to  love,  —  this 
you  are  not  able  to  do.  But  consider,  my 
friends.  You  say  you  do  not  wish  tliese 
enemies  of  yours  any  harm;  can  you  not 
go  a  little  farther  than  that  ?  Can  you  not 
truly  say  that  you  would  shield  them,  if 
it  were  in  your  power,  from  any  harm 
that  threatened  them  ?  That  man  who  has 
wronged  you,  —  if  you  saw  his  house  on 
fire,  and  knew  that  he  was  asleep  within, 
would  you  not  run  and  rouse  him  ?  You 
know  that  yoft  would.  You  are  not  so  base 
that  you  could  stand  by  and  see  one  who 
had  injured  you  suffering  and  not  interpose 
to  save  him  if  you  had  the  power.  You 
would  despise  yourself  if  you  should  permit 
even  your  just  resentment  against  wrong  to 
make  you  inhuman. 


154  TTIE  LORD'S  PRAYER. 

Now  if  you  would  take  pains,  and  ex- 
pose yourself  to  danger  and  loss,  in  order 
to  save  your  enemy  from  death  or  phys- 
ical damage  (and  any  of  you  would  do 
that,  I  am  sure),  why  should  you  not  be 
equally  quick  to  save  him  from  moral  in- 
jury ?  Is  not  the  evil  that  kills  the  soul 
worse  than  the  evil  that  kills  the  body? 
Are  not  the  wounds  that  a  man  suffei-s  in 
his  immortal  part  more  grievous  and  fatal 
than  those  which  he  suffers  in  his  mortal 
part  ?  and  if  so,  why  should  you  not  be  at 
least  as  prompt  to  shield  him  from  one  as 
from  the  other  ?  You  own  that  it  would 
be  inhuman  to  let  your  enemy  be  roasted 
alive  in  a  burning  building  if  you  had  tlie 
power  to  rescue  him;  is  it  not  equally  in- 
human to  permit  his  better  nature  to  be 
consumed  in  the  tormenting  flame  of  a  ran- 
corous and  reasonless  malignity,  when  you 
have  the  power  to  rescue  him  from  that  ? 

For  you  must  not  forget  that  this  enemy 
of  yours  is  hurting  himself,  sorely,  bitterly, 
?t^hensoever  he  does  you  wrong.     He  hurts 


THE  FORGIVING   GRACE.  155 

you,  it  may  be ;  but  the  harm  he  does  him- 
self is  ten  times  greater  than  the  harm  he 
does  you.  When  he  telS  a  lie  about  you, 
the  lie  may  injure  your  reputation  some- 
what ;  but  how  much  more  deadly  is  the  in- 
jury that  it  inflicts  on  the  soul  of  the  man 
who  tells  it !  He  smites  you  in  the  face, 
wantonly  and  without  provocation  ;  but 
how  much  worse  is  the  wound  that  the  re- 
action of  that  rage  inflicts  upon  his  char- 
acter !  He  must  either  hate  and  despise 
himself  whenever  he  thinks  of  it,  or  else, 
nursing  his  blind  passion,  he  must  be  pre- 
paring himself  for  darker  moods  and  dead- 
lier deeds. 

Now,  think  of  the  harm  that  these  ene- 
mies of  yours  are  suffering  as  well  as  of  the 
harm  that  they  are  doing.  Can  you  not,  as 
one  who  loves  his  kind,  who  is  not  pleased 
to  see  any  human  being  hurt  or  maimed  in 
any  part  of  his  life,  —  can  you  not  at  least 
pity  these  enemies  of  yours,  feel  for  them 
a  pity  which  has  in  it  no  mixture  of  con- 
tempt, but  is  a  real  and  sincere  compassion  ? 


156  THE  LORD'S  PRAYER. 

Are  you  so  utterly  egoistic  in  your  emotions 
that  your  whole  thought  is  fixed  upon  the 
injury  that  you  have  suffered  in  your  deal- 
ings with  them,  so  that  you  have  no  regrets 
left  for  them  though  they  are  suffering  so 
much  greater  injury  ?  No ;  I  will  not  think 
so  badly  as  that  of  any  of  you.  If  you 
have  never  found  in  your  heart  any  com- 
passion for  your  foes,  it  has  simply  been 
because  you  have  never  reflected  upon  the 
real  state  of  the  case ;  because  you  have 
never  taken  pains  to  put  yourselves  in  their 
places  and  to  realize  to  yourselves  the  ter- 
rible loss  and  detriment  that  they  must  be 
enduring.  I  know  that  when  you  think  of 
it  you  cannot  help  being  sorry  for  them, 
and  that  you  will  be  glad  to  do  what  you 
can  to  save  them  from  the  destruction  they 
are  bringing  upon  themselves. 

You  will  need,  though,  when  you  set 
forth  on  this  enterprise,  to  be  very  prudent. 
If  any  man  ought  be  wise  as  a  serpent 
and  harmless  as  a  dove,  it  is  the  man  who 
undertakes    to   gain   his   adversary.      The 


TEE  FORGIVING   GRACE.  157 

more  unjust  and  unreasonable  he  has  been 
in  his  treatment  of  you,  the  harder  it  will 
be  to  win  him.  "  We  hate  those  whom 
we  have  injured,"  the  Latin  proverb  says. 
The  worse  your  enemy  has  wronged  you, 
then,  the  worse  he  will  hate  you.  He  can- 
not help  being  angry  with  himself  on  ac- 
count of  the  injustice  he  has  done  you, 
and  this  anger  he  will  vent  upon  you  also. 
There  is  nothing  so  illogical  as  ugliness. 
It  is  such  a  man  as  this,  perhaps,  that  you 
have  to  win  out  of  his  enmities.  It  will 
not  be  an  easy  task.  No  officious  peace- 
making will  do.  If  you  should  send  him 
word,  or  tell  him,  that  you  had  forgiven 
him  and  were  going  to  do  him  all  the  good 
in  your  power,  you  would  only  make  him 
all  the  angrier.  Perhaps  it  will  only  be  by 
stealth  that  you  can  serve  him  at  first. 
You  will  need  about  as  much  ingenuity  and 
tact  and  patience  as  would  be  required  in 
taming  a  wild-horse  or  in  tunneling  a 
mountain.  But,  my  friend,  you  can  do  it. 
By  prayer  and  perseverance,  by  the  aid  of 


158  THE  LORD'S  PRAYER. 

tlie  wisdom  that  is  given  without  upbraid- 
ing to  every  one  that  wants  it,  and  the  love 
that  is  shed  abroad  in  the  heart  through 
Jesus  Christ  our  Lord,  you  can  conquer  this 
hate,  and  make  your  enemy  your  friend. 
Did  any  better  fight  than  this  ever  sum- 
mon you  to  a  worthier  victory  ? 

But  perhaps  you  say  to  yourself:  "The 
case  is  not,  after  all,  so  clear  as  the  preacher 
is  making  it.  I  cannot  conceal  from  myself 
the  fact  that  this  enemy  of  mine  has 
grievously  wronged  me.  This  wrong  has 
awakened  in  my  heart  a  feeling  of  resent- 
ment. It  is  not  altogether  a  selfish  feel- 
ing. The  indignation  that  stirs  in  me  is, 
at  least  in  part,  a  righteous  indignation.  I 
think  that  I  do  well  to  be  angry  when 
such  wrongs  are  done,  no  matter  who  may 
suffer  them." 

Well,  my  friend,  I  allow  that  there  is 
some  force  in  what  you  say.  I  do  not  as- 
sert that  these  resentments  of  yours  are  al- 
together   sinful.     I    believe    that   they  are 


THE  FORGIVING   GRACE.  159 

natural  —  would  be  natural  to  an  unfallen 
and  perfect  human  nature.  But,  after  all, 
I  do  not  think  that  these  indignations  ought 
to  rule  our  conduct.  They  may  speak, 
they  will  speak,  but  there  is  another  voice 
that  ought  to  be  more  commanding,  and 
that  is  the  voice  of  love.  There  is  the 
man  ;  he  has  been  your  enemy,  but  he  is 
your  brother.  He  has  injured  you,  but  he 
has  injured  himself  more.  If,  in  striking 
you  a  blow  that  did  you  no  permanent  in- 
jury, he  had  fallen  and  crij)pled  himself  for 
life,  you  would  be  magnanimous  enough,  I 
am  sure,  not  only  to  keep  no  grudge  against 
him  but  to  seek  to  show  him  kindness.  The 
case  that  he  is  in  is  no  better  than  that. 
You  may  feel  resentment  toward  him,  but 
your  feeling  of  pity,  your  desire  to  do  him 
good,  will  be  a  stronger  feeling.  It  is  not 
by  resentments  that  the  man  is  to  be 
won  to  better  ways  ;  wrath  and  indignation 
never  changed  any  man's  heart;  it  is  kind- 
ness alone  that  will  win  him,  and  this  is  the 
work  that  God  has  given  you  to  do.    Every 


160  THE  LORD'S  PRAYER. 

such  unreasoning  enmity  displayed  against 
you  by  any  human  being  is  a  call  to  self- 
denying  work  in  behalf  of  him  who  cher- 
ishes it.  If  you  have  any  such  adversary, 
you  need  not  go  about  asking  the  Lord  to 
show  you  some  Christian  work  to  do.  There 
it  is  ! 

It  is  quite  possible,  however,  that  these 
natural  resentments  of  yours,  of  which  we 
have  been  speaking,  will  need  a  little  chas- 
tening. Perhaps  they  will  be  so  stern  and 
loud  that  you  can  hardly  take  upon  yourself 
any  loving  labor  in  behalf  of  your  enemy. 
If  so,  it  may  become  necessary  for  you  to 
discipline  them  by  some  real  self-denial. 
The  opportunity  may  come  to  you  of  mak- 
ing a  costly  sacrifice  for  the  man  who  has 
wronged  you.  Do  not  miss  that  opportu- 
nity. Not  only  may  you  thus  subdue  his 
enmity,  you  will  quench  your  own  hot  in- 
dignations. You  cannot  keep  on  hating 
anybody  for  whom  you  have  voluntarily  en- 
dured hardships  and  made  sacrifices.  And 
it  is  not  at  all  probable  that  he  will  keep 


THE  FORGIVING   GRACE.  161 

on  hating  you.  By  giving  yourself  for  him 
you  will  gain  your  brother ;  and  in  so  doing 
you  will  not  only  execute  your  own  purpose 
of  forgiveness,  you  will  also  bring  him  into 
the  better  mind  in  which  he  can  receive 
forgiveness. 

And  this  takes  us  back  to  the  central 
thought  of  the  petition  we  are  studying, 
that  it  is  only  when  we  are  in  this  state  of 
mind  towards  those  who  have  wronged  us 
that  we  can  offer  this  prayer.  We  want 
from  God  a  full  and  free  forgiveness,  that 
has  mingled  with  it  no  grudges  and  no  cool- 
nesses ;  a  forgiveness  that  blots  out  our 
transgressions,  that  takes  away  all  our  in- 
iquity, and  receives  us  graciously  and  loves 
us  freely  ;  and  that  mercy  which  we  want 
from  him  we  must  be  ready  to  show  to 
others.  We  stultify  ourselves  by  asking 
our  heavenly  Father  to  extend  to  us  a 
measure  of  forgiveness  that  we  are  not  will- 
ing to  extend  to  our  brother.  Such  a 
11 


162  TEE  LORD'S  PRAYER. 

prayer  is  mockery,  and  we  know  that  it  is 
when  we  offer  it. 

What  is  more,  we  cannot  receive  the 
fullness  of  the  divine  forgiveness  until  we 
are  ready  ourselves  freely  to  forgive  —  even 
to  give  ourselves  for  —  those  who  have 
wronged  us.  The  trouble  is  not  with  the 
phraseology  of  the  prayer,  but  with  the 
facts  of  the  case. 

You  say  that  the  desert  is  a  desert  be- 
cause no  rain  falls  upon  it ;  but  that  is  only 
half  the  truth.  No  rain  falls  upon  it  be- 
cause it  is  a  desert.  The  heated  air  rush- 
ing up  from  its  arid  surfaces  disperses  the 
vapors  that  would  descend  in  rain.  Some 
moisture  there  must  be  on  the  earth,  else 
there  cannot  be  rain  from  heaven.  So  in 
your  heart  this  forgiving  disposition  must 
be,  else  you  cannot  rejoice  in  the  fullness  of 
God's  forgiving  grace.  The  pardon  may 
wait  in  the  sky  above  you,  but  it  cannot 
descend  to  you  until  that  mind  is  in  you 
which  was  also  in  Christ  Jesus. 

In  more  than  one  impressive  lesson  Christ 


THE  FORGIVING   GRACE.  163 

enforced  this  truth  upon  his  disciples.  The 
parable  of  the  unmerciful  servant  is  one  of 
these ;  and  you  do  not  forget  that  other 
word  of  his  in  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount : 
"  If  thou  bring  thy  gift  to  the  altar,  and 
there  rememberest  that  thy  brother  hath 
aught  against  thee,  leave  there  thy  gift  be- 
fore the  altar ;  first  be  reconciled  to  thy 
brother,  and  then  come  and  offer  thy  gift," 
The  fact  that  all  acceptable  prayer  must 
proceed  from  a  forgiving  spirit,  that  no 
man  can  be  reconciled  to  God  who  will  not 
be  reconciled  to  his  brother,  is  constantly 
and  strongly  asserted. 

You  have  seen  more  than  once  clear  illus- 
trations of  this  truth  in  the  lives  of  disci- 
ples. You  have  seen  enmities  and  jealousies 
and  grudges  growing  up  between  neigh- 
bors and  brethren  in  the  church  ;  and  in 
QY&xy  such  case  you  have  noticed  that  the 
spiritual  life  of  these  quarreling  Christians 
grew  feeble  and  fruitless ;  that  there  was 
no  fervor  in  their  prayers,  no  joy  in  their 
praises,  no  sign  of  heavenly  influence  in  all 


164  THE  LORD'S  PRATER. 

their  lioly  convocations.  And  then  you 
have  seen  a  better  mind  take  possession  of 
them ;  mutual  confessions  and  reconcilia- 
tions followed;  those  who  had  been  long 
estranged  came  together  and  forgave  each 
other,  and  renewed  the  old  bonds  of  charity 
and  brotherhood.  And  then,  how  quickly, 
to  the  assemblies  so  long  frigid  and  forlorn, 
the  warmth  of  holy  love  and  the  conscious- 
ness of  the  divine  presence  returned ;  how 
the  pulse  of  the  church  was  quickened,  and 
the  new  life  from  above  issued  in  abundant 
fruits  !  Every  great  religious  awakening  is 
preceded  by  such  works  of  reconciliation  ; 
and  no  wise  servant  of  Christ  expects  any 
real  spiritual  growth  or  progress  among 
those  who  are  divided  by. petty  feuds  and 
contentions.  It  is  not  till  we  are  ready 
to  forgive  that  we  find  any  profit  in  our 
prayers. 

It  is  pleasant  to  testify  that  there  are  no 
unseemly  and  scandalous  strifes  among  those 
to  whom  these  words  are  spoken.  Yet  there 
are  few  of  us,  I  fear,  who  cannot  think  of 


THE  FORGIVING   GRACE.  165 

individuals  with  whom  we  have  had  some 
little  dispute  or  disagreement,  toward  whom 
we  are  cherishing  a  feeling  of  dislike  if  not 
of  enmity.  And  it  may  be  that  in  the 
hearts  of  some  of  us  there  are  bitter  and  an- 
gry feelings  toward  those  who  have  wronged 
us,  or  with  whom  we  have  been  at  variance. 
Is  it  not  a  good  time  now  to  resolve  that 
by  the  grace  of  God  we  will  conquer  these 
resentments,  and  compose  these  difficulties, 
be  they  small  or  great ;  that  we  will  not 
harbor  in  our  hearts  an  unkind  feeling  to- 
ward any  man  ;  and  that  we  will  not  give 
over  till  we  have  won  the  love  of  those  who 
most  bitterly  hate  us  ?  There  is  no  com- 
fort in  these  grudges  ;  they  mar  all  our 
pleasures  and  spoil  all  our  peace.  There  is 
no  good  in  hating  or  in  being  hated.  It  is 
no  credit  to  any  man  to  hang  on  to  his  re- 
sentments. Some  people  fear  that  they  will 
demean  themselves  by  showing  a  forgiving 
spirit,  but  it  is  a  gaunt  and  ill-favored  sort 
of  dignity  that  lives  on  piques.  You  would 
better  let  it  starve  to  death.     There  is  no 


166  THE  LORD'S  PRATER. 

manlier  endeavor,  no  enterprise  more  chiv- 
alric,  than  the  conquering  of  a  foe  by  lov- 
ing him  out  of  his  enmity. 

It  is  only  thus  that  you  can  be  the  chil- 
dren of  your  Father  in  heaven,  who  maketh 
his  sun  to  rise  on  the  evil  and  on  the  good, 
and  "who  sendeth  his  rain  on  the  just  and 
on  the  unjust.  And  it  is  only  when  this 
mind  is  in  you  that  you  can  bow  before  his 
throne  and  say,  — 

"FOKGIVE  us  OUR  DEBTS  AS  WE  FOR- 
GIVE OUE  DEBTOES." 


VII. 

THE   GKEAT  SALVATION. 

And  lead  us  not  into  temptation,  out  deliver  us  fi'om  evil. 

Matt.  vi.  13. 

"  SuPEEFLTJOUS  and  absurd  !  "  cries  the 
critic.  "  Why  should  I  make  any  such  re- 
quest as  this  ?  You  tell  me  that  God  is  the 
infinite  Goodness.  Surely  I  cannot  believe 
in  any  God  to  whom  righteousness  in  his 
creatures  as  well  as  in  himself  is  not  the 
supreme  concern.  Now  I  am  bidden  to  be- 
seech this  Being  of  infinite  holiness  not  to 
lead  me  into  temptation,  not  to  place  me  in 
circumstances  where  my  virtue  will  be  se- 
duced and  overcome.  It  is  impossible  that 
he  should  do  anything  of  the  kind.  What 
says  the  apostle :  '  God  cannot  be  tempted 
of  evil,  neither  tempteth  he  any  man.'  If 
he  does  not  tempt  us  himself,  is  it  likely 
that  he  will  lead  us  into  places  where  evil 


168  THE  LORD'S  PRAYER. 

spirits  of  men  or  angels  will  tempt  us  ?  It 
is  absurd  to  suppose  that  he  will,  and  it 
seems  like  insulting  his  goodness  to  ask 
him  not  to  do  it." 

This  objection  seems  rational,  and  if  the 
word  temptation  in  the  text  always  meant 
what  the  objector  supposes  it  to  mean,  it 
would  be  much  more  difficult  to  answer. 
But  the  word  in  this  place  has  quite  an- 
other meaning.  The  verb  from  which  it  is 
derived  signifies  to  test,  as  well  as  to  tempt. 
It  sometimes  signifies  to  assail  one's  virtue 
by  deceit  and  seduction,  with  the  intent  and 
purpose  of  overcoming  it ;  it  sometimes  sig- 
nifies to  prove  one's  knowledge  by  exami- 
nation, or  to  test  one's  character  by  whole- 
some discipline,  with  a  benevolent  rather 
than  a  malign  purpose. 

Let  me  give  you  some  instances  in  which 
the  word  is  used  in  this  latter  sense.  When 
Jesus  saw  the  five  thousand  men  gathered 
about  him  on  the  further  shore  of  the  sea 
of  Galilee,  he  said  unto  Philip:  "Whence 
shall  we   buy  bread   that  these  may  eat  ? 


THE   GREAT  SALVATION.  169 

And  this  he  said  to  prove  him,  for  be 
himself  knew  what  he  would  do."  The 
word  "  prove  "  in  this  place  is  the  word 
often  rendered  "  tempt."  "  Examine  your- 
selves," says  the  apostle,  "  whether  ye  be 
in  the  faith."  The  word  "  examine"  in  this 
text  is  the  very  same  word.  "  I  know  thy 
works,"  says  the  Lord  to  the  church  at 
Ephesus,  "  and  thy  labor  and  thy  patience, 
and  how  thou  canst  not  bear  them  which 
are  evil,  and  hast  tried  them  which  say  they 
are  apostles  and  are  not,  and  hast  found 
them  liars."  The  word  tried,  in  this  text, 
is  the  same  word. 

This,  indeed,  is  the  primary  meaning  of 
the  word.  It  signifies  to  try,  to  put  to  the 
test.  And  you  may  put  a  thing  or  a  per- 
son to  the  test  for  a  good  purpose  or  a  bad 
purpose ;  to  put  a  character  to  the  test  for 
the  purpose  of  subverting  it  is  what  we 
ordinarily  mean  by  temptation  ;  to  put  a 
character  to  the  test  for  the  purpose  of 
bringing  out  its  latent  powers,  and  con- 
firming its  virtue,  is  a  method   to  which 


170  THE  LORD'S  PRAYER. 

God  does,  no  doubt,  in  his  wisdom,  some- 
times resort. 

It  is  true  that  the  same  experience  may 
be  to  one  an  improving  test  and  to  another 
a  hurtful  temptation.  From  the  same  or- 
deal one  man  will  come  forth  invigorated 
and  elevated  in  purpose  and  thought,  an- 
other debauched  and  demoralized.  The  re- 
sult of  this  trial  depends  on  the  man's  own 
moral  fibre.  And  I  suppose  that  God  never 
by  his  providence  leads  any  man  into  the 
presence  of  a  trial  which  the  man  is  not 
strong  enough  to  resist,  or  which  he  does 
not  give  the  man  strength  to  resist.  "  God 
is  faithful,  who  will  not  suffer  you  to  be 
tempted  above  that  you  are  able ;  but  will 
with  the  temptation  also  make  a  way  to 
escape,  that  ye  may  be,  able  to  bear  it." 

Any  trial,  then,  may  be  a  temptation  to 
one  whose  moral  nature  is  sickly  and  whose 
will  is  weak.  Every  pain  may  be  a  temp- 
tation to  one  of  small  courage  and  fretful 
temper,  —  a  temptation  to  murmur  and  re- 
pine.    Every  small  loss,  every  slight  disap- 


THE   GREAT  SALVATION.  171 

pointment,  every  little  discomfort,  may  be 
a  temptation  to  the  peevisli  spirit  and  the 
feeble  will,  —  a  temptation  to  sm'liness  and 
gloom.  Relatively  to  such  natm-es  as  these 
half  of  the  inevitable  events  of  life  are 
temptations ;  yet  most  of  us  would  be  slow 
to  pronounce  every  change  in  the  weather 
and  every  mischance  of  daily  life  a  temp- 
tation. Some  measure  of  hardship  we  ex- 
pect to  encounter  in  this  world,  and  in 
cheerfully  bearing  it  or  wisely  ignoring  it 
we  obtain  a  needful  discipline.  That  God 
does  place  us  in  the  midst  of  such  trials  as 
these  and  keep  us  among  them  we  know 
very  well;  it  never  occurs  to  us  to  accuse 
him  of  tempting  us  by  this  measure  of  ex- 
posure. And  those  to  whom  the  inevitable 
and  ordinary  trials  of  life,  the  little  pains 
and  grievances  and  slights  and  losses,  are 
temptations,  can  never  offer  this  prayer, 
"  Lead  us  not  into  temptation,"  without 
meaning  by  it,  "  Take  us  out  of  this  world 
straightway  ;  take  us  immediately  to  heav- 
en !  "     For  existence  in  this  world  is  not, 


172  THE   LORD'S  PRATER. 

and  will  not  be  in  our  generation,  exempt 
from  such  trials  as  these.  They  are  the 
constant  accompaniment  of  life.  They  are 
inseparable  from  our  environment.  They 
furnish  every  human  being  who  is  not  a 
moral  imbecile  with  opportunities  of  im- 
provement rather  than  occasions  of  sin. 
And  when  we  remember  that  God's  grace 
is  vouchsafed  to  all  who  will  receive  it,  to 
enable  them  to  profit  by  these  providential 
trials,  we  shall  surely  feel  that  it  is  a  gross 
use  of  language  to  speak  of  them  as  temp- 
tations, and  that  the  human  being  to  whom 
they  are  temptations  is  a  faithless  and  pu- 
sillanimous creature.  To  ask  God  to  lead 
us  away  from  everything  that  tries  our  pa- 
tience, that  tests  our  endurance,  that  disci- 
plines our  faith  and  courage,  is  simply  to 
ask  him  to  relieve  us  of  the  burden  of  ex- 
istence. We  do  not  pray  for  this.  What 
then  do  we  mean  when  we  pray  "  Lead  us 
not  into  trial  ?  " 

We  mean,  to  begin  with,  that  while  the 
ordinary    providential    discipline    through 


THE   GREAT  SALVATION.  173 

which  we  are  passing  is  welcomed  b}^  us 
as  a  means  under  God's  hand  of  growth  in 
virtue,  yet  that  there  are  sore  trials  that 
we  shrink  from  enduring,  and  into  which 
we  beseech  our  heavenly  Father  that  he 
will  not  conduct  us.  We  mean  by  it  just 
what  Paul  meant,  when  from  suffering  that 
came  to  him  in  God's  providence  he  be- 
souo-ht  the  Lord  thrice  that  he  might  be 
relieved,  and  heard  for  answer,  "  My  grace 
is  sufficient  for  thee  ;  for  my  strength  is 
made  perfect  in  weakness."  The  suffering 
was  wisely  ordered,  no  doubt ;  and  yet  I 
suppose  that  Paul  did  well  to  pray  to  be 
delivered  from  it.  Suffering  is  not  a  good 
in  itself ;  it  may  sometimes  be  a  means  of 
good,  but  in  itself  it  is  an  evil.  Every 
perfect  human  being  naturally  wishes  to 
be  delivered  from  suffering.  He  will  pa- 
tiently endure  it  if  he  must,  if  there  are 
ends  of  character  to  be  gained  by  enduring 
it,  but  it  is  natural  and  right  to  shrink 
from  it.  Those  who  crave  it  as  a  good  in 
itself,  who   come  to  feel  that  suffering  is 


1T4  TEE  LORD'S  PRAYER. 

meritorious  and  praiseworthy,  have  im- 
bibed a  morbid  and  heathenish  notion,  as 
unlike  the  Christian  idea  as  any  notion  can 
well  be. 

They  who  pray  "  Lead  us  not  into  trial  " 
are  offering  the  very  same  prayer  that  our 
Lord  himself  offered  in  Gethsemane  :  "  If 
it  be  possible  let  this  cup  pass  from  me ; 
nevertheless,  not  as  I  will  but  as  thou 
wilt."  It  was  the  natural  human  shrink- 
ing from  extreme  suffering  that  found  ut- 
terance in  this  petition.  There  was  no 
halting  of  the  will  before  this  ordeal ;  the 
"  nevertheless  "  modifies  the  natural  desire^ 
and  brings  it  into  subjection  to  the  judg- 
ment and  the  will.  Once  before,  standing 
in  the  very  shadow  of  the  cross,  our  Lord 
lifted  up  the  same  cry,  "Now  is  my  soul 
troubled  and  what  shall  I  say  ?  Father, 
save  me  from  this  hour.  But  for  this  cause 
came  I  unto  this  hour !  Father,  glorify 
thy  name." 

With  these  words  of  Christ  in  our  mem- 
ory, those  of   us  who   believe  in  him  will 


TEE   GREAT  SALVATION.  175 

have  no  diflSculty  in  believing  that  it  is  not 
wrong  for  the  holiest  and  most  devoted 
man  to  pray  to  be  delivered  from  severe 
trials.  Trials  there  are  that  tax  the  en- 
durance and  the  courage  of  the  strongest 
hearts ;  it  is  not  only  no  sin,  it  is  but  imi- 
tation of  the  example  of  Christ  Jesus  our 
Lord,  to  pray  to  be  shielded  from  them. 
Only  we  must  always  say  what  he  saidi 
"  Nevertheless,  not  my  will,  but  thine  be 
done."     "  Father,  glorify  thy  name  !  " 

There  are  feeble  and  faithless  spirits,  as 
we  have  seen,  to  whom  the  smallest  troubles 
are  temptations ;  to  almost  any  of  us  a 
great  trial  might  be  a  temptation.  Upon 
the  bravest  of  us  a  blow  might  fall  that 
would  blot  the  brightness  from  our  sky  and 
banish  the  gladness  from  our  homes,  —  a 
trouble  so  sore  that  we  should  be  tempted 
to  doubt  and  complain,  and  rebel  against 
God.  To  every  finite  spirit  there  is  a 
breaking  sti'ain.  And  it  is  right  for  us  to 
pray  that  God  will  mercifully  save  us  from 
these  extremities  of  trial. 


176  THE  LORD'S  PRAYER. 

Do  you  point  me  back  to  what  I  said  a 
little  while  ago,  —  that  we  know  before- 
hand that  God  will  not  lead  us  into  any 
straits  from  which  he  will  not  graciously 
help  us  out  ?  True ;  and  that  is  precisely 
what  this  prayer  asserts,  as  I  understand  it. 
The  second  phrase,  of  which  we  have  not 
yet  spoken,  must  always  be  connected  with 
the  first.  Lead  us  not  into  trial,  hut  de- 
liver us  from  evil.  Is  not  that  an  exact 
parallel  of  our  Lord's  own  prayer  already 
quoted  :  "  If  it  be  possible  let  this  cup  pass 
from  me ;  nevertheless,  not  my  will  but 
thine  be  done !  "  Lead  us  not  into  trial  ; 
but,  if_trial  must  come,  keep  us  from  fall- 
ing  into  doubt  and  sin.  Let  not  our  trials 
prove  temptations,  but  with  the  trials  give 
the  grace  to  bear  them,  so  that  they  shall 
be  ministers  of  good  to  us,  and  not  of  evil. 

In  this  view  of  the  petition,  then,  it  is 
a  simple,  natural  expression  of  desire  that 
the  Lord  would  mercifully  lead  us  not  into, 
but  away  from,  the  furnace  of  afHictiou  in 
which  souls  are  sometimes  tried  ;  and  a  de- 


THE  GREAT  SALVATION.  177 

vout  recognition  of  the  fact  that  if,  in  his 
■wisdom,  such  suffering  must  come  to  us,  it 
is  in  his  grace  alone  that  we  can  trust  to 
keep  us  from  the  evils  of  doubt  and  despair 
and  rebellion  against  God. 

But  the  meaning  of  the  petition  must  be 
somewhat  extended.  Doubtless  it  includes 
not  only  the  endurance  of  suffering,  but 
also  the  resistance  of  moral  evil;  and  it 
asks  not  only  that  the  Lord  will  spare  us 
great  trials,  but  that  he  will  also  shield  us 
from  the  assaults  of  evil  wills. 

Much  of  our  environment  is  not  of  God's 
devising.  Bad  characters,  bad  associations, 
bad  influences,  fill  many  of  the  paths  that 
open  before  our  feet.  Indeed,  it  is  impossi- 
ble wholly  to  avoid  the  evil.  The  child 
that  is  most  carefully  watched,  the  youth 
whose  ways  are  most  circumspect,  the  man 
who  keeps  his  soul  most  diligently,  comes 
into  frequent  contact  with  sin ;  and  the 
truth  which  this  prayer  recognizes  is  that 
this   contact   with   the   evil   is   not   to   be 

12 


/■ 


178  THE  LORD'S  PRAYER. 

sought,  but  shunned.  It  recognizes  the 
fact  that  every  man  has  his  weaknesses  and 
limitations,  and  that  it  is  safer  for  him  to 
be  surrounded  with  good  influences  than 
with  evil  influences  ;  that  character  grows 
better  in  a  congenial  than  in  an  uncon- 
genial atmosphere.  We  must  encounter 
evil ;  our  daily  duty  will  bring  us  often 
face  to  face  with  it ;  but  some  paths  are 
safer  than  others,  some  associations  are  less 
hostile  to  virtue  than  others ;  and  the 
prayer  is  that  God  will  lead  us  into  those 

paths_where_tha_d^'igPi'  i'^  Ipasi-  ;  t.linf;^  sn  ii\x 

as  it  is  consistentjwith  duty,  his  kind  provi- 
dence  will  keep  usjmt ^f^associations  where 
our  virtue_will^  be  assailed.  To  ask  God 
that  he  will  not  lead  us  into  such  exposures 
is  not  to  imply  that  he  is  likely  to  do  this 
and  must  be  besought  not  to  do  it ;  it 
means,  simply,  lead  us  out  of  and  away 
from  temptation.  The  petition  contains 
something  like  what  the  logicians  call  a 
negative  pregnant,  in  which  the  negation 
of  one  thing  implies  the  affirmation  of  the 
opposite. 


THE   GREAT  SALVATION.  179 

The  petition  implies  that  God  will  lead 
us  if  we  ask  his  guidance. 

It  also  implies  that  if  we  will  follow  him 
he  will  lead  us  into  safe  places  and  away 
from  the  snares  that  are  set  for  our  feet. 

It  expresses  our  desire  to  be  kept,  so  far 
as  we  may  be  without  neglecting  duty, 
from  exposure  to  the  allurements  of  vice 
and  sin  ;  to  be  surrounded  with  virtuous 
rather  than  with  vicious  influences. 

It  confesses  our  faith  that  God  will  so 
keep  us  if  we  put  our  trust  in  him. 

The  true  Christian  purpose  and  practice 
is  suggested  by  this  prayer,  and  it  is  a 
golden  mean  that  lies  between  two  ex- 
tremes. 

The  one  extreme  is  that  of  the  religious 
recluse,  who,  because  of  his  fear  that  his 
life  may  be  tainted  by  the  sins  of  the  world, 
withdraws  himself  wholly  or  mainly  from 
intercourse  with  his  fellows.  If  he  does 
not  retire  into  a  monastery  he  turns  his 
home   into   a   cloister,   shuns   society,    and 


180  THE  LORD'S  PRAYER. 

wraps  bis  robes  closely  about  bim  wben  be 
walks  tbe  crowded  streets.  We  know  tbat 
tbis  is  not  tbe  Cbristian  way  of  living,  be- 
cause it  is  not  tbe  way  tbat  Cbrist  bimself 
lived,  and  bis  last  prayer  for  bis  disciples 
was,  "I  pray  not  tbat  tbou  sbouldst  take 
;  tbem  out  of  tbe  world,  but  tbat  tbou 
sbouldst  keep  tbem  from  tbe  evil."  Wbat 
be  desired  for  tbem  was,  not  tbat  tbey 
sbould  be  sbut  out  from  all  association  witb 
tbeir  fellows,  but  tbat  tbey  sbould  be  kept 
from  being  barmed  in  tbeir  cbaracters  by 
Bucb  associations. 

Tbe  metbod  of  bis  kingdom  is  personal 
contact  and  influence.  It  is  by  tbe  friendly 
association  of  tbe  good  witb  tbe  evil,  by 
tbe  communication  of  ti'utb  and  love  from 
tbe  good  to  tbe  evil,  tbat  tbe  evil  are  to 
be  saved,  and  tbe  world  redeemed.  Tbe 
leaven  in  tbe  lives  of  bis  disciples  is  to  be 
mingled  witb  tbe  mass  of  tbe  world's  self- 
isbness  and  sin  until  tbe  wbole  sball  be 
leavened.  He  wbo  seeks  entire  seclusion 
from  society  puts  bimself,  tberefore,  wbolly 


THE   GREAT  SALVATION.  181 

out  of  all  relation  to  the  work  of  God 
in  the  world,  and  refuses  to  employ  the 
method  that  .God  has  chosen  and  conse- 
crated. 

But  association  with  men  for  a  benevo- 
lent purpose  is  one  thing,  and  an  unre- 
strained intercourse  with  the  evil  of  the 
world  is  quite  another  thing.  Mr.  Edward 
Denison,  a  man  of  wealth  and  devoted 
Christian  character,  made  his  home  in  one 
of  the  worst  districts  of  London,  and  spent 
his  life  there  in  trying  to  lift  up  the  fallen 
and  to  befriend  the  friendless.  By  such  a 
life  as  this  he  showed  himself  not  only  a 
saint  but  a  Christian  hero.  If  he  had  gone 
into  that  neighborhood  simply  to  find  com- 
panionship, casting  himself  into  the  filthy 
currents  of  its  bad  society  and  drifting 
with  them,  he  would  have  speedily  sunk 
down  among  the  dregs  of  humanity. 

This,  then,  is  the  other  extreme  of  which 
I  spoke  —  that  of  the  reckless  pleasure- 
seeker  who  rushes  into  all  kinds  of  associa- 
tions, not  with  any  purpose  of  reclaiming 


182  THE  LORD'S  PRAYER. 

the  vicious  with  whom  he  consorts,  but 
simply  for  the  excitements  of  society.  If  a 
man  is  on  fire  with  a  philanthropic  purpose, 
his  contact  with  bad  men  may  not  harm 
him  ;  but  if  he  has  no  such  consuming  de- 
sire to  do  men  good,  if  his  association  with 
men  is  only  that  of  companionship,  if  he 
does  not  know  that  the  virtue  in  him  is  so 
positive  and  vigorous  that  it  will  overpower 
their  vice,  then  he  may  well  pray,  "  Lead 
me  not  into  temptation  !  " 

Exposure  to  these  direct  assaults  of  moral 
evil  is  indeed  far  more  to  be  dreaded  and 
far  more  diligently  to  be  guarded  against 
than  exposure  to  suffering.  It  is  natural 
and  right,  as  we  have  seen,  to  ask  the  Lord 
to  spare  us  the  bitter  anguish  of  great 
losses  and  sore  trials,  but  there  is  deeper 
and  stronger  reason  why  we  should  ask 
him  to  shield  us  from  the  poisoned  arrows 
of  vice  and  sin.  There  is  far  greater  dan- 
ger to  our  characters  in  the  contact  with 
sin  than  in  the  endurance  of  suffering  or 
sorrow. 


THE   GREAT   SALVATION.  183 

I  wish  that  I  could  impress  this  truth 
upon  the  minds  of  all  the  bo3^s  and  girls,  of 
all  the  young  men  and  maidens,  to  whom, 
in  any  way,  these  words  may  come.  When 
you  offer  the  Lord's  Prayer,  as  most  of  you 
do,  I  trust,  every  day,  do  not  forget  to  let 
your  desire  rest  firmly  and  fervently  on  this 
petition.  Ask  the  Lord  to  keep  you  away 
from  bad  company ;  from  the  society  of 
those  who  are  vicious  and  corrupt  and  pro- 
fane ;  from  association  with  those  whose 
minds  are  filthy  and  whose  talk  is  vile ;  from 
all  communion  with  evil  minds,  and,  so  far 
as  possible,  from  all  knowledge  of  evil 
things.  People  talk  about  seeing  the  world, 
about  getting  their  eyes  opened,  and  all 
that ;  but  do  you  see  just  as  much  of  the 
good  of  the  world  as  you  can,  and  just  as 
little  of  the  evil.  Get  your  eyes  open  as 
wide  as  you  can  to  behold  the  truth  of  nat- 
ure and  the  beauty  of  the  Lord,  but  shut 
them  tight  upon  visions  of  sin  and  shame. 
I  tell  you,  young  people,  that  familiarity 
with   evil  words   and  evil  ways  brings  no 


184  THE  LORD'S  PRAYER. 

gain  to  you,  —  nothing  but  loss  and  sorrow. 
There  is  one  kind  of  ignorance  you  need 
never  bhish  for,  —  ignorance  of  the  names, 
or  of  the  arts,  of  vice  and  crime.  If  your 
too-knowing  associates  jeer  at  you  for  such 
verdancy,  thank  God  that  you  are  not  pro- 
ficient in  such  knowledge.  '  The  less  you 
know  of  the  things  that  you  are  ashamed 
to  speak  of  the  better  for  you.  If  by  any 
possibility  you  have  learned  such  things, 
forget  them  as  soon  as  you  can.  And  al- 
ways remember,  that,  except  as  you  seek 
to  overcome  evil  with  good,  the  safest  way 
is  to  shun  the  evil. 

Remember,  then,  all  of  you,  old  and 
young,  that  this  petition  we  are  now  study- 
ing is  like  all  the  rest  in  this  respect,  that 
those  who  offer  it  have  much  to  do  them- 
selves in  answering  it.  "  Faithful  prayer," 
says  Mr.  Ruskin,  "  implies  always  correla- 
tive exertion;  and  no  man  can  ask  honestly 
or  hopefully  to  be  delivered  from  temp- 
tation, unless  he  has  himself  honestly  and 
firmly  determined  to  do  the  best  he  can  to 
keep  out  of  it." 


THE   GREAT  SALVATION.  185 

We  must  not  overlook  the  plural  form  of 
this  petitiou.  It  is  uot  only  a  personal  re- 
quest, it  is  an  intercessory  petition.  "  Lead 
us  not  into  temptation ;  deliver  us  from 
evil."  Our  thought  takes  in  others  besides 
ourselves  ;  the  shelter  and  deliverance  that 
we  implore  for  ourselves  we  ask  for  all  our 
fellow-men.  And  surely  if  we  ask  the  Lord 
to  keep  our  neighbors  out  of  temptation,  we 
shall  be  careful  how  we  ourselves  do  any- 
thing to  place  temptation  in  their  way  ;  we 
shall  do  all  that  we  wisely  can  to  make  the 
surroundings  of  their  lives  belpful,  "and  not 
corrupting,  to  their  virtue. 

Especially  full  of  tender  solicitude  will 
this  petition  be  as  it  falls  from  the  lips  of 
parents.  Lead  us,  deliver  us.  The  larger 
desire  that  takes  in  all  mankind  is  gathered 
into  a  burning  ray  of  intensest  yearning  as 
it  falls  upon  the  group  that  kneels  around 
the  family  altar.  Look,  Father,  upon  these 
before  thee ;  these  whom  our  love  encircles  ; 
those  who  in  tlie  thoughts  of  the  night,  and 


186  TEE  LORD'S  PRAYER. 

in  the  labors  of  the  day,  are  always  with  us  ; 
these  with  whose  welfare  all  our  lives  are 
bound  up,  —  deliver  these  from  the  snares 
of  the  spoiler  ;  shelter  all  of  us  from  evil !  " 
Alas,  my  friends,  if  we  would  make  our 
practices  march  a  little  more  evenly  with 
our  prayers  !  God  knows  our  hearts  ;  he 
knows  how  deeply  we  desire  that  our  chil- 
dren should  be  kept  from  temptation  ;  and 
yet  I  fear  that  he  often  sees  us  contradict- 
ing our  prayers  by  the  plans  we  make  for 
them,  or  by  our  weak  concessions  to  harmful 
social  tendencies.  "  In  modern  days,"  says 
Mr.  Ruskin,  speaking  bitterly,  as  is  his 
wont,  yet  with  far  too  much  reason  in  his 
bitterness,  —  "  in  modern  days  the  first  aim 
of  all  Christian  parents  is  to  place  their 
children  in  circumstances  where  the  temp- 
tations (which  they  are  apt  to  call  '  oppor- 
tunities ')  may  be  as  great,  and  as  many,  as 
possible  ;  where  the  sight  and  the  promise 
of  '  all  these  things  '  in  Satan's  gift  may  be 
brilliantly  near,  and  where  the  act  of  '  full- 
ing  down  to  worship   me '  may  be  partly 


THE   GREAT  SALVATION.  187 

concealed  by  the  shelter,  and  partly  excused 
as  involuntary  by  the  pressure,  of  the  con- 
current crowd." 

Let    us    heed    this    sharp    rebuke,    my 
friends;   and  when  we  pray  that  our  chil- 
dren may  not  be  led  into  temptation  let  us 
do  what  we  can  to  choose  for  them  a  place 
to  live  and  a  manner  of  life  in  which  they 
shall  be  exposed  to  the  least  possible  temp- 
tation.    Many  a  man  prays  at  the  family, 
altar  "  Lead  us  not  into  temptation,"  and: 
then  rises  from  his  knees,  packs  his  mov-\ 
ables  and  goes  with  all  his  family,  where  ) 
Lot  went,  straight  down  to  Sodom. 

And  yet  it  will  not  be  possible  for  any 
of  us,  young  or  old,  wholly  to  avoid  tempta- 
tion. Absolute  freedom  from  contact  with 
the  evil  is  no  more  to  be  attained  than 
absolute  immunity  from  pain  and  trouble. 
Duty  will  take  us  often  into  the  presence 
of  temptation  ;  deceitful  and  alluring  forms 
of  vice  will  appeal  to  passions  that  strongly 
respond  and  to  wills  that  feebly  resist.  It 
is  not,  then,  entire  exemption  from  evil  in- 


188  THE  LORD'S  PRAYER. 

fluence  that  we  expect  when  we  pray,  but 
only  that  so  far  as  is  possible  without  neg- 
lect of  duty,  without  withdrawing  ourselves 
from  the  service  of  God  and  humanity,  we 
may  be  kept  from  contact  with  the  evil, 
and  that  when  we  do  encounter  it  we  may 
be  strong  to  stand  against  it ;  that  we  may 
be  delivered  from  its  power  and  dominion. 
Here,  again,  comes  in  that  complementary 
phrase  without  which  this  petition  would 
not  be  perfect :  Lead  us  out  of  temptation  ; 
but,  when  we  must  confront  it,  deliver  us 
from  the  evil  towards  which  the  temptation 
draws  us. 

A  temptation  resisted  brings  us  moral 
invigoration  ;  if,  by  the  grace  of  God,  we 
overcome,  we  are  strengthened  in  the  con- 
flict. Nevertheless,  our  faith  and  firmness 
will  get  all  the  exercise  they  need  in  resist- 
ing the  temptations  that  we  cannot  avoid ; 
it  is  only  when  we  shield  ourselves,  so  far 
as  we  consistently  can,  from  evil  influences, 
that  we  can  honestly  ask  the  Lord  to  de- 
liver us  from  the  evil  that  is  inevitable. 


THE   GREAT  SALVATION.  189 

But  what  is  that  word  of  the  sturdy 
James :  "  My  brethren,  count  it  all  joy 
when  ye  fall  into  divers  temptations ! " 
Does  not  that  contradict  this  petition  ?  Oh, 
no.  The  "  falling  into  temptation  "  is  not 
the  heedless  or  the  wanton  exposure  to 
temptation  ;  his  words  do  not  mean  that. 
When,  in  the  course  of  your  daily  duty, 
you  find  yourselves  surrounded  with  divers 
temptations,  count  it  joy.  Do  not  run  tim- 
idly away  from  duty  because  temptation  is 
there ;  do  not  sit  weakly  down  and  deplore 
the  evil.  Up  and  at  it !  That  temptation 
is  the  bugle  call  to  the  good  fight  of  faith. 
•You  were  in  the  path  of  dut}''  when  you 
encountered  this  temptation ;  whenever  you 
are  in  that  path  God  is  always  with  you ; 
then  he  is  with  you  now,  and  by  his  might 
you  shall  overcome.  Joy,  the  joy  of  the 
warrioi',  shall  fill  your  soul  as  you  gird 
yourself  for  the  battle  when  victory  is  sure. 

"  Blessed  are  ye  when  men  shall  perse- 
cute you  !  "  says  the  Master.  What  then  ? 
Court  persecution  ?    Seek  martyrdom  ?   So 


190  THE  LORD'S  PRATER. 

some  have  argued,  but  the  logic  is  poor. 
Hear  another  word  of  his  that  must  be 
coupled  with  it :  "  When  they  persecute 
you  in  one  city  flee  to  another."  You  need 
not  go  or  stay  anywhere  on  purpose  to  be 
persecuted  ;  avoid  it  as  far  as  you  can  with- 
out being  false  or  faithless  ;  but  when  it 
comes  to  you  in  the  paths  of  duty,  then 
know  that  the  rugged  way  in  which  you 
walk  leads  up  the  mount  of  the  Beatitudes. 
By  the  same  rule  deal  with  temptation. 
Do  not  court  it ;  do  not  wantonly  expose 
yourself  to  it ;  pray  to  be  led  away  from  it ; 
but  when  it  rises  up  in  your  way  then  meet 
it  and  fight  it  like  a  man,  with  prayer  and 
thanks  to  God  who  giveth  us  the  victory 
through  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ. 

When  we  utter  this  prayer,  then,  we  can- 
not help  remembering  that  an  absolute  and 
perfect  answer  to  its  request  is  not  possible 
for  us  in  this  world.  To  be  shielded  wholly 
from  trial,  to  be  defended  entirely  from 
temptation,  —  that  cannot  be  in  this  world. 


THE   GREAT  SALVATION.  191 

While  we  live  here  sorrow  will  abide  with 
us,  and  sin  will  compass  us  round  about. 
And  yet  I  am  sure  that  there  will  always 
be  in  every  Christian  heart  a  wish  that 
this  prayer  might  be  answered  in  an  abso- 
lute sense,  and  a  faith  that  it  will  be  in 
God's  own  time.  To  each  of  us  whom  God 
is  leading  a  day  will  come  when  we  shall  be 
led  out  of  and  away  from  all  trouble  and 
all  temptation,  when  we  shall  be  delivered 
at  once  and  forever  from  all  the  evil.  And 
although  we  will  not  ask  for  ourselves  what 
our  Master  would  not  ask  for  us,  that  we 
may  be  taken  out  of  the  world,  yet  some- 
times in  the  midst  of  our  conflicts  and  our 
cares  the  thoughts  of  that  deliverance  and 
that  rest  are  very  sweet. 

But  not  only  in  the  land  immortal  do 
we  look  to  see  the  complete  answering  of 
this  prayer.  For  some  of  us  when  we 
pray  "  Thy  kingdom  come  !  "  believe  that 
it  is  coming  ;  coming  to  this  earth  in  the 
fullness  of  the  years ;  coming  with  all  its 


192  THE  LORD'S  PRAYER. 

light  and  sweetness,  —  with  all   its   purity 
and  peace.    We  believe  that  a  day  is  coming 
when  the  bounty  of  the  earth  will  fill  all 
its  homes  with  plenty;  when  work  will  be 
every  man's  highest  privilege,  and  prayer 
the  refreshment   and   inspiration  of   every 
human  spirit ;  when  pain  shall  have  lost  its 
sting  and  the  grave  its  terrors  in  the  bright- 
ness of   the  hope  that  shines  through  its 
narrow  portal ;  when  there  shall  be  peace 
on   earth  and   good-will    among   men,  and 
none  shall  hurt  or  destroy  in  all  God's  holy 
mountain. 

May  God  forgive  our  faithlessness  if  our 

lips  ever  stammer  or  our  hearts  ever  falter 

in  lifting  up  this  prayer  !    We  know  that 

the  answer  will  come,  is  surely  coming,  — 

"  For  thine  IS  the  kingdom  and  the 

POWER  AND  THE  GLORY  FOREVER  !  " 


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